Pilar laughed; but Doña Cazadero looked severe.
"I think you do not think what you say, niña," she rebuked. "It is not modest. I am not quite sure, but I think it is blasphemous as well."
In the meantime Don Vincente had come in and greeted the Colonel in his slow and dignified manner, apologizing for the delay. Fully two minutes were consumed in the leisurely exchange of beautiful compliments in the Spanish fashion; and then Don Vincente led his visitor to his own private office at the end of the east wing. This was a small, stuffy, rather dark room with a huge desk, leather chairs, sheepbound books, a large carved wood clock, an owl under a glass dome, abalone shells, some framed documents in Spanish, a leather lounge, a bridle braided of bright-dyed horsehair. It was crowded coziness. Here the gentlemen sat themselves down and lighted cigars.
"I have come on a personal matter," began the Colonel, after the preliminary conversation had been cleared away. "Between men not as intimate as ourselves, it would be an affair of some delicacy. But with us it is as one brother speaking to another within family walls. We have been neighbours and friends for thirty years."
"Proceed, Ricardo," said Don Vincente. "Nothing you could say to me would be taken amiss."
"I am informed, in confidence, that there is some difficulty in meeting a trifling obligation, and that you may lose a portion of Las Flores. Is that true?"
Don Vincente blew a cloud and shrugged his shoulders.
"True enough. It is business, I suppose. I can blame nobody; though it has seemed to me that a little patience until the season of the selling of cattle would not have been much to ask. Last season, as you know, was dry and bad. It had not seemed to me until lately that money was lacking. There has always been plenty. Some mistake, I think. Impossible to say. But Señor Mills has explained to me. I can see the justice of his remarks. He cannot be blamed. It is only a misfortune, and one must bear misfortune serenely when it comes."
