“Ay, true, Will; everything vile and vulgar. Don’t it make you mad to think of it?”
“No, not mad. That isn’t the feeling I have; rather fear.”
“Fear! Of what!”
“That the scoundrels may do some harm to our dear girls. As we know now, they’re up to anything. Since they don’t stick at assassination, they won’t at abduction. I hope your letter to Don Gregorio may open his eyes about them, and put him on his guard. My Iñez! who’s to protect her? I’d give all I have in the world to be sure of her getting safely embarked in that Chilian ship. Once there, dear old Harry Blew will take care of her—of them both.”
Cadwallader’s words seem strangely to affect his companion, changing the expression upon his countenance. It is still shadowed, but the cloud is of a different kind. From anger it has altered to anxiety!
“You’ve struck a chord, Will, that, while not soothing the old pain, gives me a new one. I wasn’t thinking of that; my thoughts were all occupied with the other trouble—you understand?”
“I do. At the same, I think you make too much of the other trouble, as you call it. I confess it troubles me too a little; though, perhaps, not as it does you. And luckily less, the more I reflect on it. After all, there don’t seem so much to be bothered about. As you know, Ned, it’s a common thing among Spanish-Americans, whose customs are altogether unlike our own—to have gamblers going into their best society. Besides, I can tell you something that may comfort you a little—a bit of information I had from Iñez, as we were platicando along the road on our ride. It was natural she should speak about the sky-blue fellow and my sticking his horse in the hip.”
“What did she say?” asks Crozier, with newly awakened interest.
“That he was a gentleman by birth; but falling fast, and indeed quite down.”
“And De Lara; did she say aught of him?”