“Without doubt you speak truth, Excellency. I might add––(had I not been whipped into politeness to my superiors!) that the deluded maid had lost her wits ere she fell into love with a face seen from a balcony––or with a voice whispering to her in the darkness of a rose bower!”
Don Ruy looked at him without much of sweetness in the glance.
“I’ve two minds regarding you,” he stated,––“and one of them is to thresh you for faithlessness and a forward tongue!”
“Then I beg that you choose the other mind!” said the secretary, on his feet, alert, and ready to make a run if need be. “Don Diego could not well spare me in the midst of his struggles with the heathen, and his desire that honest things be set down in the ‘Relaciones.’ Moreover––Excellency, it would take many words to convince that pious gentleman that I had been faithless in aught––to you!”
There was a pitiful little quaver in the last words by which Don Ruy was made ashamed of his threat, for despite his anger that the lad was over close in the confidence of the unknown Mexican maid, yet the stripling had been a source of joy as they rode side by side over the desert reaches, and he knew that only for him had those Indian thoughts been given that were heresy most rank for any other ears. In ways numberless had the devotion of the lad been manifest.
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But Don Ruy had little heart to discuss the matter, he was still flushed with the annoying thought that the young cub had been let know every whisper of the moment under the roses. He walked away without more words.