CHAPTER XIX
THE next morning Webster waited until Dolores appeared and then accompanied her into the dining room for breakfast.
“Well, how did you pass your first night in Buenaventura?” she inquired, in the manufacture of breakfast conversation.
“Not very well. Jiggers bit me and woke me up, and finally I fell into a trance and had a vision—about you. After that I couldn't get to sleep again. I was fairly bursting to see you at breakfast and read your palm. I've just discovered a wonderful system.”
“Show me,” she flashed back at him, and she extended her little hand. He picked it up gravely and with the dull tine of a fork made a great show of tracing the lines on her palm.
“You are about twenty-four years old, and your ancestors were pure-bred Castilians who came from Madrid, crossing the Atlantic in caravels. Ever since the first Ruey landed on this coast the family has been identified with the government of the country in one way or another. Also, Scotch, French, and Irish blood has been infused into the tribe; your mother was an Irish woman. When you were quite a little girl, your father, Don Ricardo Ruey, at that time president of Sobrante, failed to suppress a revolution and was cornered in the government palace, which was set afire.
“Through the bravery and devotion of a cockney gentleman, Colonel Henry Jenks, an artillery officer in your father's army, you were saved from perishing in the burning palace. Colonel Jenks turned you over to his spouse, now known as Mother Jenks, with instructions to raise you a lydy, and Mother Jenks has carried out those instructions. Colonel Jenks and your father were executed, and Mother Jenks sent you to the United States to be educated. You had a brother, Ricardo Luis Ruey, older than yourself by seven or eight years, I should judge. In some mysterious manner you and your brother lost track of each other, and at the present moment he believes you perished in the flames that gutted the government palace.
“You are of a proud, independent nature; you work at something for a living, and inasmuch as you haven't been able to set aside a great deal of money from your earnings, you are planning to terminate your visit to your native land at an early date and return to the United States for the purpose of getting back to work. These plans, however, will never be consummated.