"Well, how are you, old woman, how are you?" said he as he went in, in a half rough and half kindly tone which betrayed his entire indifference.
Doña Carmen looked up with a smile.
"What, you? What miracle brings you here at this hour?"
"I should have come earlier, but I was told that Father Ortega was with you. How did you sleep? Pretty well? That's right. You are not so ill as you fancy. Why do you let the priests come hanging about you as if you were at the point of death?"
"Do you suppose a priest is of no use but when one is dying?"
"Of course priests about a house are indispensable to make it look respectable," he answered, stretching himself in an easy chair, and spreading out his legs. "Without a rag of black fustian, a newly furnished palace like this is too gaudy. Still, in the long run, they become a nuisance; they are never tired of begging; they have a swallow like a whale's. I should like to buy sham ones made of wax or papier-maché, they would answer every purpose."
"There, there, Antonio. Do not talk so wildly. Any one who heard you would take you for a heretic, and that you are not, thank God!"
"What should I gain by being a heretic? That does not pay." Then suddenly changing the subject, he said: "How is that caravansary of yours in the Cuatro Caminos getting on?"
He meant the asylum of which Doña Carmen was the chief benefactress.
"It is doing very well, excepting that the Marquesa de Alcudia wishes to retire, and we do not know whom to appoint as treasurer in her place."