At that juncture one of the salesmen entered the dining-room, and Roberto, who was about to say something, grew silent and looked impertinently at the intruder. The student was an aristocratic type with blond hair, thick and combed back, and moustache of glittering white, like silver; his skin was somewhat tanned by the sun.
"Won't you continue?" asked Don Telmo.
"No," answered the student, staring at the salesman. "For I don't want anybody to hear what I have to say."
"Come to my room, then," replied Don Telmo. "There we can talk undisturbed. We'll have coffee up in my room. Manuel!" he ordered. "Bring us two coffees."
Manuel, who was deeply interested in discovering what the student had to say, dashed out into the street on his errand. He was more than a quarter of an hour in returning with the coffee, and supposed that Roberto by this time had finished his story.
He knocked at Don Telmo's door and was resolved to linger there as long as possible, that he might catch all he could of the conversation. He began to dust Don Telmo's lamp-table with a cloth.
"And how did you ascertain that," Don Telmo was asking, "if your family didn't know it?"
"Quite by accident," answered the student. "A couple of years ago, about this time of the year, I wished to give a present to a sister, who is a protegée of mine, and who is very fond of playing the piano. It occurred to me, three days before her birthday, to purchase two operas, have them bound and send them to her. I wanted to have the book bound immediately, but at the shops they told me there was no time; I was walking along with my operas under my arm in the vicinity of the Plaza de las Descalzas when in the back wall of a convent I caught sight of a tiny bookbinder's shop,—like a cave with steps leading down. I asked the man,—a gnarled old fellow,—whether he would bind the book for me in a couple of days, and he said 'Yes.' 'Very well,' I told him, 'then I'll call within two days.'—'I'll send it to you; let me have your address.' I gave him my address and he asked my name. 'Roberto Hasting y Núñez de Letona.'—'Are you a Núñez de Latona?' he inquired, gazing at me curiously. 'Yes, sir.'—'Do you come from la Rioja?'—'Yes, and suppose I do?' I retorted, provoked by all this questioning. And the binder, whose mother was a Núñez de Latona and came from la Rioja, told me the story I've just told you. At first I took it all as a joke; then, after some time, I wrote to my mother, and she wrote back that everything was quite so, and that she recalled something of the whole matter."
Don Telmo's gaze strayed over toward Manuel.
"What are you doing here?" he snarled. "Get out; I don't want you going around telling tales…."