"Well, then?"
Don Cornelio behaved like most men when in a state of embarrassment; that is to say, he scratched his head. At length he said,—
"I cannot leave my friends."
"What friends?"
"Those in whose company I am."
"Then they want to go to San Francisco?"
"Yes."
"What to do?"
"Ah! That is it," the Spaniard replied, more and more embarrassed by the obligation of confessing the trade in which he was engaged, and which he fancied must lower him to an extraordinary degree in the eyes of the young lady whose heart he fancied he had touched.
"I am waiting," she said with a slight frown of her arched brows.