“So you’re a little bit jealous, child? No need to blush about that. We’re all the same when we’re in love with a man. The first thing we think about is that some one is going to take him away from us.... But you’ve no reason to worry.... A pearl the like of you, niña, mía! The lady in the house there is handsome too, especially when she’s just got through fixing her hair, and putting all those things that smell so good and that came all the way from Buenos Aires on her face.... But, when you are in the game, what hope has she? Didn’t I see my little girl here come into the world, you might say? And I’ll bet the señora marquesa can’t remember when she was born.”
Then, as a result of her own thoughts, she considered it well to add,
“To tell the truth, I don’t think the marquesa is so old, at that—but anyone would seem old alongside of you, precious! We can’t all be rose-buds!”
She stopped talking for a moment while she looked about, and then lowering her voice, and standing on the tips of her toes, she said, as joyfully as any gossip who has found someone to whom to impart a tit-bit, “You must know, pretty one, that there are plenty of them running after her ... but don Ricardo is none of those! The poor gringo has enough on his hands looking after you, my jasmine-blossom! The others are all chasing after the marquesa like ostriches ... the captain, and the Italian, and the government fellow, the one who always carries so many papers.... All of them out of their heads and bristling at sight of one another like so many dogs. The husband never sees a thing ... and she laughs at them all and has a good time making them squirm.... To tell the truth I don’t think she cares a picayune for any one of the whole lot that comes to the house.”
But Celinda’s uneasiness was not set at rest by these words. On the contrary she protested mentally,
“How can Richard Watson be compared with these people?”
Then she felt that she must express a part at least of what she was thinking.
“It may be true,” she observed, “that she doesn’t care much about the others, but Richard is younger than any of them, and I know that these women who have run about a lot in the world, and are beginning to grow old ... well, they’re often very capricious!”
CHAPTER IX
THE notorious Manos Duras lived on an elevation of the mesa from which he could see the distant limits of Patagonia on the far horizon, and below, the wide, twisting curves of the river, beyond which stretched one end of the Rojas ranch.