Barring accidents, my dear Webster, you are good for at least six weeks of existence. Beyond that I dare not guarantee you.
Thine,
Andrew Bowers.
“That makes it nice,” the recipient of this comforting communication soliloquized. He went up to his room, packed a duffle-bag with such belongings as he would find necessary during a prolonged stay in the mountains, and at luncheon was fortunate enough to find Dolores in the dining room when he entered. Again she motioned him to the vacant chair opposite to her.
“I'm going up to San Miguel de Padua this afternoon,” he announced as he took his seat. A look of extreme anxiety clouded her lovely face, and he noticed it. “Oh, there's no risk,” he hastened to assure her. “That scamp of a brother of yours, through his friends in high places, has managed to get me a reprieve.” He handed her Ricardo's letter.
She looked up, much relieved, from her perusal. “And how long do you expect to be gone, Caliph?”
“Quite a while. I'll be busy around that dratted concession for a couple of weeks, surveying and assaying and what-all; then, while waiting for our machinery and supplies to arrive from the United States, I shall devote my spare time to hunting and fishing and reforming Don Juan Cafetéro. The cool hills for mine.”
“What a selfish, unsociable programme!” she reflected. “I wonder if it will occur to him to come down here once in a while and take me for a drive on the Malecon and talk to me to keep me from dying of ennui before I meet Ricardo. I'll wait and see if he suggests it.”
However, for reasons best known to himself and the reader, Mr. Webster made no such interesting suggestion; so she decided that while he was tremendously nice, he was, nevertheless, a very queer man and thoroughly exasperating.
Before leaving that day Webster turned over to her a steamer-trunk filled with books, and with something of the feeling of a burglar about to rob a bank, asked her if she would care to ride down to the station with him. “Sort of speeding the parting guest, you know,” he explained comfortably, for somehow, at that moment, he felt a trifle untrue to Billy Geary. Of course, Dolores, having nothing more pleasurable or exciting to do, would—and did. At the station they found Don Juan waiting in charge of the baggage.