"Happy Dolores," said Hazlitt. And then Don Raymundo rode round the turn in the shrubbery below and swung from the saddle. Dolores shrank back, but Don Raymundo only smiled up inscrutably. If he had seen the little comedy, he gave no sign. "I'll join you in a minute," he called to them.
A flash of anger swept over Hazlitt at this man whose mere approach took all the witchery from life. He pressed Dolores' hand before he released it. "She shall be happy," he muttered defiantly, to Don Raymundo and the world. "She shall be happy always."
"There seems to be a great deal of unnecessary time in the world," Don Raymundo observed with his perverse triviality. He and Hazlitt had run across each other in the sala after their siesta, and now they were sitting with their long chairs drawn up before a window, waiting for the end of the day.
"Perhaps there is," Hazlitt agreed, slowly gathering resolution for his plunge. "And yet, with agreeable companionship, and perhaps a wife—Don Raymundo, we Americans are blunt. I want to marry Doña Dolores."
Don Raymundo smoked placidly for a moment. "I have been expecting this," he said at last. "I have—shall I be blunt?—been fearing this."
Hazlitt flushed. "I know it seems presumptuous," he said. "People will call me a climber. And yet— We have no aristocracy in my country, no recognized aristocracy, as perhaps you know. But of such families as we have, mine is not the worst. For five generations—"
"I care little about families," said Don Raymundo coolly.
The tone was courteous, but the words stung Hazlitt. "I am not a rich man," he said, "but I have enough. I was afraid at first that it was the hacienda I cared for, not the wealth of it, but the power and romance of the life here. That was what took me at first, but now it's Doña Dolores herself. I know it. I had hoped—" he hesitated. After six months of almost daily intercourse it was as impossible to break through Don Raymundo's smiling reserve as it had been at first. "I had hoped that you might find the company of another white man not disagreeable, that we might perhaps even become friends, but—all that doesn't matter, but simply this: it isn't the hacienda I want."
Don Raymundo spread out his hands with a gesture of utter weariness. "I care so little for the hacienda and who has it and what becomes of it," he said, "that if the burden of it could be lifted from me I should be almost happy, I think." And while scorn for the eternal posing of the man was setting Hazlitt's lips, he went on: "My friend, and I call you friend because I feel a friendliness for you, I am going to tell you a story I never thought to tell to any one." Don Raymundo's momentary energy dropped from him. "If you care to listen," he amended, in his most uninterested manner.
"Go on, please," said Hazlitt impatiently.