I lit my cigar and sat down to have a talk with him.
“Ah, with you foreigners it is just the same—land or water,” he continued. “You can even smoke—what a calm head and quiet stomach you must have! But what puzzles me is this, señor; how you, a foreigner, come to be travelling with native women. Now, there is that beautiful young señora with the violet eyes, who can she be?”
“She is my wife, old man,” said I, laughing, a little amused at his curiosity.
“Ah, you are married then—so young? She is beautiful, graceful, well educated, the daughter of wealthy parents, no doubt, but frail, frail, señor; and some day, not a very distant day—but why should I predict sorrow to a gay heart? Only her face, señor, is strange to me; it does not recall the features of any Oriental family I know.”
“That is easily explained,” I said, surprised at his shrewdness, “she is an Argentine, not an Oriental.”
“Ah, that explains it,” he said, taking another long pull at the bottle. “As for the other señora with you, I need not ask you who she is.”
“Why, who is she?” I returned.
“A Peralta, if there ever was one,” he returned confidently.
His reply disturbed me not a little, for, after all my precautions, this old man had perhaps been sent to follow Demetria.
“Yes,” he continued, with an evident pride in his knowledge of families and faces which tended to allay my suspicions; “a Peralta and not a Madariaga, nor a Sanchez, nor a Zelaya, nor an Ibarra. Do I not know a Peralta when I see one?” And here he laughed scornfully at the absurdity of such an idea.