After landing we put our small luggage into a fly and were driven to an hotel in Calle Lima, an out-of-the-way place kept by a German; but I knew the house to be a quiet, respectable one and very moderate in its charges.
About five o'clock in the afternoon we were together in the sitting-room on the first floor, looking down on the street from the window, when a well-appointed carriage with a gentleman and two young ladies in it drew up before the door.
“Oh, Richard,” exclaimed Paquíta in the greatest excitement, “it is Don Pantaleon Villaverde with his daughters, and they are getting out!”
“Who is Villaverde?” I asked.
“What, do you not know? He is a Judge of First Instance, and his daughters are my dearest friends. Is it not strange to meet them like this? Oh, I must see them to ask for papa and mamita!” and here she began to cry.
The waiter came up with a card from the Señor Villaverde requesting an interview with the Señorita Peralta.
Demetria, who had been trying to soothe Paquíta's intense excitement and infuse a little courage into her, was too much amazed to speak; and in another moment our visitors were in the room. Paquíta started up tearful and trembling; then her two young friends, after staring at her for a few moments, delivered a screech of astonishment and rushed into her arms, and all three were locked together for some time in a triangular embrace.
When the excitement of this tempestuous meeting had spent itself, Señor Villaverde, who stood looking on with grave, impressive face, spoke to Demetria, telling her that his old friend, General Santa Coloma, had just informed him of her arrival in Buenos Ayres and of the hotel where she was staying. Probably she did not even know who he was, he said; he was her relation; his mother was a Peralta, a first cousin of her unhappy father, Colonel Peralta. He had come to see her with his daughters to invite her to make his house her home during her stay in Buenos Ayres. He also wished to help her with her affairs, which, his friend the General had informed him, were in some confusion. He had, he concluded, many influential friends in the sister city, who would be ready to assist him in arranging matters for her.
Demetria, recovering from the nervousness she had experienced on finding that Paquíta's great friends were her visitors, thanked him warmly and accepted his offer of a home and assistance; then, with a quiet dignity and self-possession one would hardly expect from a girl coming amongst fashionable people for the first time in her life, she greeted her new-found relations and thanked them for their visit.
As they insisted on taking Demetria away with them at once, she left us to make her preparations, while Paquíta remained conversing with her friends, having many questions to ask them. She was consumed with anxiety to know how her family, and especially her father, who made the domestic laws, now, after so many months, regarded her elopement and marriage with me. Her friends, however, either knew nothing or would not tell her what they knew.