"I will ask her."
"Not her," returned Garcia petulantly. "Are you a pig, an ass, a fool? Ask the old one—the duenna. It ought to be a great deal; it ought to be half—and more."
To satisfy the old man as well as himself, Coronado sounded Mrs. Stanley as to the proposed division.
"Yes, indeed!" said the lady emphatically. "Clara must do something for Garcia, who has been such an excellent friend, and who ought to have been named in the will. But you know she has her duties toward herself as well as toward others. Now the property is not a million; it may be some day or other, but it isn't now. The executors say it might bring three hundred thousand dollars in ready money."
The executors, by the way, had been sedulously depreciating the value of the estate to Clara, in order to bring down her vast notions of generosity.
"Well," continued Aunt Maria, "my niece, who is a true woman and magnanimous, wanted to give up half. But that is too much, Mr. Coronado. You see money" (here she commenced on something which she had read)—"money is not the same thing in our hands that it is in yours. When a man has a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, he puts it into business and doubles it, trebles it, and so on. But a woman can't do that; she is trammelled and hampered by the prejudices of this male world; she has to leave her money at small interest. If it doubles once in her life, she is lucky. So, you see, one half given to Garcia would be, practically speaking, much more than half," concluded Aunt Maria, looking triumphantly through her argument at Coronado.
The Mexican assented; he always assented to whatever she advanced; he did so because he considered her a fool and incapable of reasoning. Moreover, he was not anxious to see half of this estate drop into the hands of Garcia, believing that whatever Clara kept for herself would shortly be his own by right of marriage.
"You are the greatest woman of our times," he said, stepping backward a pace or two and surveying her as if she were a cathedral. "I should never have thought of those ideas. You ought to be a legislator and reform our laws."
"I never had a doubt that you would agree with me, Mr. Coronado," returned the gratified Aunt Maria. "Well, so does Clara; at least I trust so," she hesitated. "Now as to the sum which our good Garcia should receive. I have settled upon thirty thousand dollars. In his hands, you know, it would soon be a hundred and fifty thousand; that is to say, practically speaking, it would be half the estate."
"Certainly," bowed Coronado, meanwhile thinking, "You old ass!" "And my little cousin is of your opinion, I trust?" he added.