"Isn't that pretty?" said Garda to Winthrop.
"Immensely so," replied that decorated personage.
"But he does not look half so serious as you look comical—with all those brilliant flowers by the side of your immovable face," she went on, breaking into a laugh.
"It is of small consequence how I look, seeing that the señorita herself placed them where they are," answered Winthrop, in tolerable if rather labored Spanish, turning with a half-smile to Torres as he borrowed his phrase.
"You did not like it? You thought it childish?" said Garda. She drew the stalk quickly from its place. She was now speaking English, and Torres watched to see the fate of his gift; she had taken the flowers with the intention of throwing them away, but noticing that the Cuban's eyes were fixed upon them, she slipped the end of the stem under her belt, letting the long brilliant spray hang down over her dark skirt.
"I am now more honored than ever," said Winthrop.
"But it is Mr. Torres whom I am honoring this time," answered the girl.
Torres, hearing his name in her English sentence, drew the heels of his polished boots together with a little click, and made another low bow.
The rest of the party now came up, and soon after, the visitors took leave; Winthrop rode back across the pine-barrens to Gracias. Dr. Kirby bore him company on his stout black horse Osceola, glad indeed to be there and off his own feet; on the way he related a large portion of that history of the Spaniards in Florida which Garda, their descendant, had interrupted at the mill.
As they left East Angels, and rode out on the barren, this descendant was being addressed impressively by her mother. "That, Garda, is my idea of a cultivated gentleman: to have had such wide opportunities, and to have improved them; to be so agreeable, and yet so kind; so quiet, and yet so evidently a man of distinction, of mark—it's a rare combination."