Eskurola went on as if Cartaret had not spoken:
“It is not our custom to present to our ladies such casual strangers as happen to ask shelter of us; nor is it the custom of our ladies to permit such presentations, still less to seek them. Of that last fact, I say but one word more: the Doña Dolorez has been lately from home, and I fear that her contact with the outer world has temporarily dulled the edge of her native sensitiveness.”
“Look here,” said Cartaret, his hands clenched, “if you mean to imply——”
“Sir!” The Basque’s eyes snapped. “I speak of my sister.”
“All right then. But you’d better be told a few facts, too. Paris isn’t Alava. I met the Doña Dolorez in Paris. We were neighbors. What could be more natural, then, than that, when I came here——”
“Ah-h-h!” Eskurola softly interrupted. In the meshes of his beard, his red lips were smiling unpleasantly. “So that was it! How stupid of me not to have guessed before, sir. I was sure that there had been in Paris something beside Art.”
Cartaret’s impulse was to fly at the man’s throat. His reason, determined to protect the woman that cared no more for him, dictated another course.
“I wanted,” he said quietly, “to make your sister my wife.”
The effect of this statement was twofold. At first a violent anger shook the Basque, and the veins stood out in ridges along his neck and at his temples, below the red cloth bound about his head. Then, as quickly, the anger passed and was succeeded by a look reminiscent, almost tender.
“You know that no alien can marry one of our people,” he said. “You know that now.”