"I will see you this afternoon," said I; and she passed on. I determined to have it out with Ballester at the earliest possible moment. And within the hour he gave me the opportunity. For he came into the room and said:
"Carlyon, I have not had my letters this morning.
"No, your Excellency," I replied. I admit that my heart began to beat more quickly than usual. "I took the Señorita Olivia to the station, where we were stopped."
"I thought you would," he said, with a grin. "But it is impossible that the Señorita should leave Santa Paula."
"But you can't keep her here!" I cried. "It's--it's----" "Tyrannical" would not do, nor would "autocratic." Neither epithet would sting him. At last I got the right one.
"Your Excellency, it's barbaric!"
Juan Ballester flushed red. I had touched him on the raw. To be a thoroughly civilised person conducting a thoroughly civilised Government over a thoroughly civilised community--that was his wild, ambitious dream, and in rosy moments he would even flatter himself that his dream was realised.
"It's nothing of the kind," he exclaimed. "Don Santiago is a dangerous person. I was moved by chivalry, the most cultured of virtues, to let him go unpunished. But I am bound, from the necessities of the State, to retain some pledge for his decent behaviour."
The words sounded very fine and politic, but they could not obscure the springs of his conduct. He had first got Harry Vandeleur out of the way; then, and not till then, he had pounced upon Don Santiago. His aim had been to isolate Olivia. There was very little chivalry about the matter.
"Besides," he argued, "if there were any barbarism--and there isn't--the Señorita can put an end to it by a word."