"Oh, she and father used to go over it in his study last winter after Ted came down here," Miss Langham answered, with a touch of impatience in her tone. "Isn't there some place where we can go to get out of this heat?"
Weimer, the Consul, heard her and led her back to Kirkland's bungalow, that hung like an eagle's nest from a projecting cliff. From its porch they could look down the valley over the greater part of the mines, and beyond to where the Caribbean Sea lay flashing in the heat.
"I saw very few Americans down there, Weimer," said King. "I thought Clay had imported a lot of them."
"About three hundred altogether, wild Irishmen and negroes," said the Consul; "but we use the native soldiers chiefly. They can stand the climate better, and, besides," he added, "they act as a reserve in case of trouble. They are Mendoza's men, and Clay is trying to win them away from him."
"I don't understand," said King.
Weimer looked around him and waited until Kirkland's servant had deposited a tray full of bottles and glasses on a table near them, and had departed. "The talk is," he said, "that Alvarez means to proclaim a dictatorship in his own favor before the spring elections. You've heard of that, haven't you?" King shook his head.
"Oh, tell us about it," said Miss Langham; "I should so like to be in plots and conspiracies."
"Well, they're rather common down here," continued the Consul, "but this one ought to interest you especially, Miss Langham, because it is a woman who is at the head of it. Madame Alvarez, you know, was the Countess Manueleta Hernandez before her marriage. She belongs to one of the oldest families in Spain. Alvarez married her in Madrid, when he was Minister there, and when he returned to run for President, she came with him. She's a tremendously ambitious woman, and they do say she wants to convert the republic into a monarchy, and make her husband King, or, more properly speaking, make herself Queen. Of course that's absurd, but she is supposed to be plotting to turn Olancho into a sort of dependency of Spain, as it was long ago, and that's why she is so unpopular."
"Indeed?" interrupted Miss Langham, "I did not know that she was unpopular."
"Oh, rather. Why, her party is called the Royalist Party already, and only a week before you came the Liberals plastered the city with denunciatory placards against her, calling on the people to drive her out of the country."