“She is not mistaken, caballero. Two thumbs are alike, but two faces never.”
“You never were at Lima?” said Greaves.
“Never,” I exclaimed, laughing.
“Let her have her way,” said Greaves. “Contrive to have visited Lima, and to have been a bosom friend of Don——,” and he named the Spanish merchant. “What does it signify? May it not mean that she is in love with you, and that her professing to have met you is a Spanish maiden’s device to cover an advance, as a soldier would say.”
Antonio continued to squint. I viewed him narrowly, and was satisfied that he had not understood the captain’s words.
“Beg the lady to continue her narrative,” said Greaves.
She addressed Antonio in a few sentences at a time. Occasionally her language was above his understanding; he would look at her stupidly, until she gave him another nod. How rich was her Spanish, how honey-sweet her utterance! It was like listening to singing. The memories which thronged her recital delicately colored with blood her pale olive cheek; her eyes moistened or sparkled as she spoke, or watched while Antonio interpreted. Most of the time her gaze was fastened upon me. It seemed as though she put me before Greaves, as though the incident of my having had charge of the boat which brought her off the island, had established me in her gratitude as her deliverer.
Her story, however, was little more than a repetition of what has already been related. Her mother had been absent twenty years from Old Spain. On the death of her husband, she sold the estate and all her interest in the business, and went to Acapulco with her daughter, on a visit to her brother, who was a priest at that place; thence she and Aurora took shipping for Cadiz.
The lady broke off at this to implore us, through Antonio, to tell her, as sailors, whether we believed her mother’s life had been preserved. Greaves answered that he considered it very probable that her mother was alive. Who was to tell that the ship had foundered? Who was to say that she had not outweathered the gale, been jury-rigged and worked by the survivors into port, the Señorita Aurora’s mother being on board?
The girl’s eyes glistened when this was translated. She smiled at Greaves and thanked him in Spanish. An expression of pleading then entered her face, and her look took a peculiar color of beauty from the wistfulness and plaintiveness of it. Why would not the captain set her ashore at Lima, that she might rejoin her mother, who, on landing—it mattered not at what port on the coast—was sure to make her way to Acapulco?