"You will excuse me, Caballero," the hacendero continued, frankly, "but your visit so surprised me, that at the moment I did not think of offering the refreshment which a tired traveller requires so much. Your room is prepared, rest yourself tonight, and tomorrow we will resume our conversation, and arrive at a solution I trust mutually satisfactory."
"I hope so, my dear sir. Heaven is my witness that it is my greatest desire," Don Rufino answered, as he raised to his lips the glass of orangeade brought by the peon. "Unhappily I fear that, with the best will in the world, we cannot come to a settlement unless—"
"Unless!" Don Hernando sharply interrupted. Don Rufino quietly sipped his orangeade, placed the glass on the table, and said, as he threw himself back on the butaca, and rolled a cigarette—
"Unless you pay me in full what you owe me, which, from what you have said, appears to me to be difficult, I confess."
"Ah!" Don Hernando remarked with an air of constraint, "What makes you suppose that?"
"I beg your pardon, my dear sir, I suppose nothing: you told me just now that you were hardly pressed."
"Well, and what conclusion do you derive from that?" the hacendero asked impatiently.
"A very simple thing—that seventy thousand piastres form a rather round sum, and that however rich a man may be, he does not always have it in his hands, especially when he is pressed."
"I can make sacrifices."
"Believe me, I shall be sincerely sorry."