"Don't speak of it, Sebastian," cried Dolores, shuddering.
"I'm afraid our relationship is a little indefinite," I said. "My uncle married your aunt, and we are therefore--what?"
"Staunch friends, I hope, Carbonnell; closer friends, I trust, than many relatives are."
"With all my heart I hope that too, senor," declared Dolores, and soon after she and Senora Torella, who had scarcely said a word in Quesada's presence, left us. As soon as we were alone and had lighted our cigars, my host returned to the subject of the Castelars, and his open, unembarrassed manner of dealing with it surprised me.
"You have seen Sarita Castelar, you say, Carbonnell? She is a very beautiful girl, don't you think?" and his keen eyes were watching my face as I answered.
"Unquestionably. One of the most beautiful I have ever seen."
"It is a coincidence, too, is it not?--she is the image of her mother in looks; you are not at all unlike your uncle in looks, and you speak Spanish like a--as well as he did; you are here in Madrid. It would be a strange coincidence if the parallel was to be carried a stage farther."
"And I were to fall in love with her and marry her, you mean?" If he could bluff, so could I; and in neither my laugh nor my face was there a trace of anything but apparent enjoyment of a rich absurdity. But it required no lynx eye to see that he did not enjoy my completion of his suggested parallel. "I'm afraid she'd have a poor sort of future. We younger sons of poor peers are not as a rule millionaires. But she is a very beautiful girl."
"She is a very extraordinary one, and her brother has had far too much influence with her. I fear sometimes----" he left the sentence unfinished, pursed his lips, and shook his head dubiously.
"By the way, she and Madame Chansette--who is, I believe, your late father's sister--are hopeful that the family will restore the property which I understand belongs to Sarita's mother and should have gone to her children."
"Say rather you don't understand, Carbonnell," he cried, laughing and shaking his head. "The good and amiable Chansette has what you English call a bee in her bonnet on that subject; and unfortunately the two children share the delusion. Why, if there was such property I should surely know of it; do you think I should not positively hail the chance of providing adequately for Sarita? Not for Ramon, perhaps. That I grant you. The young dog deserves the whip and worse. My very life is not safe while he is at liberty. But Sarita--why, I like the child. I call her child, although she is four-and-twenty; but as I am seven-and-thirty, and she has always been a child in my thoughts, she seems so now. Wonderfully pretty, wilful, disobedient, resentful, always irresistibly charming, but still a child. Don't take her seriously, Carbonnell; for she is just the type of woman, when taken seriously, for whom men rush even to the gates of hell."