She left him, promising to visit him daily in the future. As she walked back towards the bridge companion, she met Dr. Christobal. His fit of ill-humor had gone: he was all smiles; but Elsie, having extracted such information as Frascuelo possessed, was bent on adding to her store of knowledge. Incidentally, she meant to widen the doctor’s views.
“Why have you taken to lecturing me?” she asked, with a simple directness which Christobal was not slow to profit by.
“Because, though old enough to be your father, or your elder brother, as you were kind enough to put it, I have not yet reached years of discretion.”
If candor were needed, he would be candid. Sophistry was worse than useless with a woman of Elsie’s type. The only way to win her was to be transparently honest. To Christobal, after an experience of a generation of Chileans, this came as a refreshing novelty.
“You mean, I suppose, that if every one attended to their own affairs it would be a less spiteful world? I am inclined to agree with you. Unhappily, life is largely made up of these minor evils. Yet I should have thought that the desperate conditions under which we exist at this hour might protect me from uncharitableness.”
“You are pleased to be severe.”
“No; it is the last privilege of danger that shams should vanish. Yet we plumb the depths of absurdity when we contest the right of any woman, even a young and unmarried one, to appreciate all that a brave man has done and is doing to save her life.”
Here was candor undiluted. Elsie was speaking without heat. She might have been reasoning some disputed point in ethics. The Spaniard was obviously thrown off his guard.
“You seem to demand an explanation,” he said with some warmth. “Well, you shall have it. I am not a man to flinch from the disagreeable. I admit a sort of impression, I might almost describe it as a conviction, that Captain Courtenay’s manner towards you betokens a growing admiration.”
“This is the wildest folly,” cried Elsie in bewilderment. “I—I cannot imagine what put such a notion into your head.”