"No, massa; not unless Marcus was very deaf."
"Which, fortunately, you are not. Keep a sharp look-out, my lad, and I'll give you a half dollar to-morrow."
Paul left the office and returned to Villa Moraquitos, where, for once in a way, he found Camillia alone with Mlle. Corsi. Her father was absent at a dinner party, given by Augustus Horton.
This very dinner party was a portion of the villainous plot, concocted by Silas Craig and the planter, for the destruction of Paul Lisimon.
The evening flew by like some blessed dream to the young Mexican. Camillia was by his side; she sang to him wild and plaintive Spanish ballads, whose mournful and harmonious cadence drowned his soul in rapture. The words written in the love-breathing language of that Southern land, from whose orange groves and palaces the ancestors of Camillia had emigrated to Southern America.
A happy evening; alas! the very last of happiness that Paul was to taste for a long time to come.
But even in the society of Camillia Moraquitos, Paul could not quite repress a certain uneasiness about the money he had left in the cash box in Silas Craig's office.
He disliked the responsibility of the trust which had been forced upon him by his employer, and was impatient to return the key of the office to its owner.
For this reason he was at his post earlier than usual the following morning.
Silas Craig did not enter the clerk's office till much later than his customary hour for beginning business. Morisson and one or two others began to speculate upon the probability of their employer having drank rather too freely at the planter's dinner table.