"'Always,' the General said.
"'I have nothing to detain me here—I have seen Seville thoroughly, and shall be glad to make this journey,' James said, without paying attention to what had passed.
"I felt my cheeks tingling with impatience and indignation. What did this eagerness and solicitude mean? Did he forget how unbecoming it was—did he not remember how this strange, passionate, ill-regulated creature, in spite of her beauty, her marvelous eyes, and her bewitching voice, belonged to a race separated from us by all natural laws! Did he forget that she was a menial—a slave?
"The General was smiling still, and smoothing a long curl of his wife's hair that had broken loose from the comb and fell over the cushion in a shining wave.
"'James is so full of his scheme of becoming a modern Don Quixote, that he did not even hear me say that I would bring Zillah on here,' he said.
"'It strikes me that you are inclined to do Don Quixote yourself, sir,' exclaimed James, and his voice was sharp and harsh.
"'Excuse me—you misunderstand,' replied the General, in a rather drawling, sarcastic tone; 'if I were inclined to emulate Cervantes, here I think my taste is sufficiently patrician for me to display it in some other quarter than toward my wife's domestic.'
"The tone was somewhat sneering, and the speech was a little affected and fatuous, but I knew he said it as a reproof to James, and he deserved it well.
"'I am sure the courier seems the proper person to send back,' Mrs. Harrington said, a little disturbed by this unusual tone between her husband and son. 'Why should'nt he go, General?'
"'You are right, my treasure, as you always are,' he replied. 'But as I began to tell you, I am obliged to return to Cadiz myself.'