Since his arrival at the hacienda, Don Rufino had sent off messengers in several directions, and received letters. One morning he entered Don Hernando's study with an easy air, where the latter passed nearly the day, engaged in the most abstruse calculations. The hacendero raised his head with amazement on seeing the Senator; it was the first time the latter had come to seek him in this room. He suffered a heart pang; but he succeeded in hiding his emotion, and good-humouredly invited his visitor to take a seat.
"My dear Señor," Don Rufino began, as he comfortably stretched himself out upon a butaca, "excuse me for pursuing you into your last entrenchments, but I want to talk seriously with you, and so I frankly knocked at this door."
"You have done well," Don Hernando answered, with ill-dissembled agony: "you know that I am entirely at your disposal. How can I be of any service to you?"
"I will not trouble you long: I am not fond of lengthy conversations, and have merely come to terminate the affair which we began on the day when I arrived at the hacienda."
The hacendero felt a cold perspiration stand on his temples at this brutally frank avowal.
"I had not forgotten you," he replied: "at this very moment I was making arrangements which, I trust, will enable me to discharge the debt in a few days."
"That is not the point," Don Rufino remarked, airily: "I do not want the money, and request you to hold it for me as long as you possibly can."
Don Hernando looked at him in amazement. "That surprises you," the Senator continued, "and yet the affair is very simple. I was anxious to prove to you that you had in me not a pressing creditor, but a truly devoted friend. When I saw that it would greatly embarrass you to repay me this trifle, and as you are a gentleman I am anxious to oblige, I turned to another quarter."
"Still," Don Hernando, who feared a snare, objected: "you said to me--"
"I believed it," Don Rufino interrupted him. "Fortunately it was not so, as I have recently acquired the proof: not only have I been able to meet my payment, but I have a considerable sum left in my hands which I do not know what to do with, and which I should feel much obliged by your taking; for I do not know a more honourable gentleman than yourself, and I wish to get rid of the money, which is useless to me at the moment."