Then Zindorf addressed my father.
“Pendleton,” he said, “the fortunes of life change, and the ideas suited to one status are ridiculous in another. Ordez was a fool. He made believe to this girl a future that he never intended, and she is under the glamor of these fancies.”
He stood in the posture of a monk, and he spoke each word with a clear enunciation.
“It is a very delicate affair, to bring this girl out of the extravagances with which Ordez filled her idle head, and not be brutal in it. We must conduct the thing with tact, and we will ask you, Pendleton, to observe the courtesies of our pretension.”
When he had finished, he flung a door open and went down a stairway. For a time my father heard his footsteps, echoing, like those of a priest in the under chambers of a chapel. Then he ascended, and my father was astonished.
He came with a young girl on his arm, as in the ceremony of marriage sometimes the priest emerges with the bride. The girl was young and of a Spanish beauty. She was all in white with blossoms in her hair. And she was radiant, my father said, as in the glory of some happy contemplation. There was no slave like this on the block in Virginia. Young girls like this, my father had seen in Havana in the houses of Spanish Grandees.
“This is Mr. Pendleton, our neighbor,” Zindorf said. “He comes to offer you his felicitations.”
The girl made a little formal curtsy.
“When my father returns,” she said in a queer, liquid accent, “he will thank you, Meester Pendleton; just now he is on a journey.”
And she gave her hand to Lucian Morrow to kiss, like a lady of the time. Then Zindorf, mincing his big step, led her out.