Dolores and Lieutenant Gordon being left alone stood together at the window for some minutes without speaking. Dolores was the first to break the silence.
"You are sorry to leave us, Mr Gordon," she said; "but it will give you great joy to see your own family again."
"It will. You who have never been away from your own people cannot tell the joy there is in meeting again those you love after a long absence," replied Gordon.
"But I can understand it, remember how long Marcelino was away from us; I was quite a little girl when he went to Cordova, but I used often to think of him and wonder what he would be like, and then when he did come back I was so proud of him. Your sisters are thinking about you now as I used to think about Marcelino."
"I dare say they are, for this was my first experience of foreign service. I had no idea that I should come here when I left England, for we were sent to the Cape of Good Hope."
"What things you will have to tell them! If you had never been——if you had not stopped with us you would never have known what it is to gallop over the Pampa."
"And more than that, I should never have known you as I do know you. They know already what kind friends I have found here, how fortunate I have been. When I reach home I shall never be tired of talking to them about you."
"They will be glad to have you back again, but they will not care to hear much about us. Marcelino has told me how in Europe they think that all South Americans are savages."
"They will soon learn to know better when I tell them about you, and about Doña Constancia and Don Roderigo and Marcelino, and about all of you. And about your houses, and about your tertulias in the evenings. They will learn to think much of you, my sisters would be ready to love you if they only saw you. My mother knows your name already; in her second letter she asked me a great many questions about you."