"Hazleet, it is your lead," said Doña Ceferina, gathering up her hand. It was a sign of the fellowship established between them that she called him Hazlitt in the good, round, Spanish way, without any fuss over titles. It was a stronger sign that she sat with her feet tucked up in her chair, native-fashion. "One gets used to it," she had explained, the first time she ventured it in his presence, "and it's much more comfortable."
"Hazleet, I shall beat you again," said Doña Ceferina. "Lead!"
Hazlitt laid his finger inquiringly on a card, and looked back over his shoulder, where a pair of interested eyes signalled approval. Suddenly he spied a forgotten card down in the corner of his fistful. Señorita Dolores gave a small wail of dismay as he played it, and Doña Ceferina smiled in pleasant derision.
"I mistook it for a King," said Hazlitt in apology.
"It is a mistake," said the remorseless Doña Ceferina, "which costs you a media peseta. Now play again."
Hazlitt played again and again, and lost each time, and enjoyed Doña Ceferina's little triumph almost as much as she did. She wasn't half bad, if she was not exciting, this plump good-natured Doña Ceferina, with her eternal cigarette and her cards or novel or conversation. Hazlitt smiled whimsically at that last thought. "What are you laughing at, Hazleet?" his opponent demanded.
He had been thinking of the Frenchwoman who was famed for having such a marvellous gift for conversation, and none at all for dialogue, but he couldn't very well tell Doña Ceferina that. "At the way I'm playing," he replied.
"You couldn't well play worse," said Doña Ceferina good-humoredly, taking toll of her bit of silver. "Lead again."
Hazlitt could play worse, and promptly did it. There are infinite possibilities of badness, even in panguingui. Not at all a bad person to share a secret with, this simple, matter-of-fact Doña Ceferina. And he believed they were sharing one. In Doña Ceferina's placidly romantic bosom, he guessed, had grown a vision of a young prince come out of the West to rescue her imprisoned princess from this tropical Castle of Indolence. A vision had come to him, too, a vision which made him lean back and forget his cards. Six months ago a beach-comber, gilded and respectable, of course, but still a beach-comber, an adventurer, without a country; and now, perhaps, a man whom many a petty prince might envy. Fancy ruling undisputed with Señorita Dolores over the quiet domain of the "Hacienda without a Name!" Jove, what a queen she'd make.
A hand stole down over his and pityingly pointed out the proper card, and Hazlitt sternly repressed an impulse to fling away the cards and take the hand, and keep it. The time was drawing near when he must put his fortune to the test.