“It is good, sir. If you can bear with my house, it is yours for so long as you care to honor it with your presence.”
Cartaret knew that this must be only an exaggerated fashion of speech, but he chose to take it literally.
“That’s very good of you,” he said. “I haven’t ridden for years and I’m rather done up. If you really don’t mind, I think I will rest here over another night.”
Don Ricardo seemed unprepared for this, but he checked a frown and bowed gravely.
“A year would be too short for me,” he vowed.
They fell to talking, the host now trying to turn the conversation into the valley, the guest holding it fast to the castle-heights.
“It is a beautiful place,” said Cartaret; “I don’t know when I’ve seen anything to compare with it; and yet I should think you’d find it rather lonely.”
“Not lonely, sir,” said the Basque. “The hunting in the valley is a compensation. For example, where you see those oaks about the curve of that river, I hunted, not ten days ago, a wolf as large as those for which my ancestors paid the wolf-money.”
“Still,” Cartaret persisted, “you do live here quite alone, don’t you?”
He knew that he was impudent, and he felt that only his host’s reverence for the laws of hospitality prevented an open resentment. Nevertheless, Cartaret was bound to find out what he could, and this time he was rewarded.