"Receive my thanks, general."
After exchanging a few more words they parted. In passing Doña Angela, Valentine bowed respectfully.
"Don Louis still has your reliquary," he muttered in so low a voice that she guessed the words rather than heard them.
"Thank you," she answered; "you are kind."
"She loves Louis," Valentine said to himself as he returned to the cuarto, accompanied by Don Cornelio.
"The man is a fool to refuse a profit of 5000 piastres," the general said to Don Isidro so soon as he found himself alone with him.
"Perhaps so," the latter replied thoughtfully; "but I fancy he is an enemy."
The general shrugged his shoulders contemptuously, not deigning to attach the slightest importance to this insinuation.
The same evening Valentine and his two companions left San José, and proceeded toward Guaymas, without seeing Doña Angela or the general again.