After some moments of silence he looked up and said, “Richard, you admired and loved that beautiful girl when you first saw her. Listen, if you wish it you shall have her for a wife. She is simple-minded, ignorant of the world, affectionate, and where she is told to love she will love. Batata's people will obey my wishes in everything.”
I shook my head, smiling somewhat sorrowfully when I thought that the events of the last few days had already half obliterated Margarita's fair image from my mind. This unexpected proposition had, moreover, forced on me, with a startling suddenness, the fact that by once performing the act of marriage a man has for ever used up the most glorious privilege of his sex—of course, I mean in countries where he is only allowed to have one wife. It was no longer in my power to say to any woman, however charming I might find her, “Be my wife.” But I did not explain all this to the General.
“Ah, you are thinking of conditions,” said he; “there will be none.”
“No, you have guessed wrong—for once,” I returned. “The girl is all you say; I have never seen a being more beautiful, and I have never heard a more romantic story than the one you have just told me about her birth. I can only echo your prayer that she may not suffer as her mother did. In name she is not a de la Barca, and perhaps destiny will spare her on that account.”
He glanced keenly at me and smiled. “Perhaps you are thinking more of Dolores than of Margarita just now,” he said. “Let me warn you of your danger there, my young friend. She is already promised to another.”
Absurdly unreasonable as it may seem, I felt a jealous pang at that information; but then, of course, we are not reasonable beings, whatever the philosophers say.
I laughed, not very gaily, I must confess, and answered that there was no need to warn me, as Dolores would never be more to me than a very dear friend.
Even then I did not tell him that I was a married man; for often in the Banda Orientál I did not quite seem to know how to mix my truth and lies, and so preferred to hold my tongue. In this instance, as subsequent events proved, I held it not wisely but too well. The open man, with no secrets from the world, often enough escapes disasters which overtake your very discreet person, who acts on the old adage that speech was given to us to conceal our thoughts.