“He must have been a bit of a fool,” hazarded Dick. “A true conqueror guesses there are new lands to conquer even before he sees them.”
“Like Pizarro and Cortes!” exclaimed the Marquis.
“Who came to destroy everything...” began Uncle Francis. Fortunately, Don Christobal did not hear him, and he stopped in time. Maria-Teresa, seated opposite the savant, had trodden on his foot, and he bit his lip, remembering that de la Torre, the Marquis’ ancestor, had been one of Pizarro’s “destroyers.”
Both old ladies, however, had heard, and opened their eyes at this denunciation of a cause which to them was that of the true faith against the infidel. Maria-Teresa, anxious to smooth matters over, quickly brought them back to their Inca legends.
“All this is very fine,” she said, “but there is nothing to show that the Indians still sacrifice human brings.”
“How can you say that!” they exclaimed in chorus.
“Well, has anybody ever had definite proof of it?”
Aunt Agnes was not to be shaken in her convictions.
“When I was a little girl,” she declared, “I had an old nurse who belonged to one of the Lake Titicaca tribes of Quichuas. She told me that she herself had seen three Spanish girls walled up alive at three successive Interaymi fêtes.”
“Where did the girls come from?” asked Dick.
“But then, any number of people must have known of it,” he answered, secretly amused by the grave airs of the two old ladies.
“It was, and is, common property,” retorted Aunt Agnes. “The names of their last two victims were known to everybody. One vanished ten years ago, and the other ten years before that.”
“Yes, yes, common property!” laughed Don Christobal.
“There is nothing to laugh about, Christobal,” said Aunt Agnes drily.
And the duenna repeated in a low voice, “No, no, nothing to laugh about.”
The Marquis was determined to have his laugh.
“Let us mourn the poor children,” he said, groaning. “Cut off from the affection of their parents at so early an age! How terrible!”
“Christobal, can you tell me what became of Amelia de Vargas and Marie Cristina de Orellana?”
“There we are!... the old story! I expected it!” exclaimed the Marquis.
“You might speak seriously! You knew Amelia de Vargas....”
“A charming girl... the sweetest smile in the city!... That was twenty years ago.... How time flies!... Yes, she disappeared... with a poor cousin.”