But there were others, among them the Viceroy, who neither shouted nor clapped their hands, but looked uneasily one at the other, as though they were far from pleased.
Don Gregorio, looking round his table, saw the various emotions depicted on the faces of his guests; he saw a cloud on the usually open countenance of the Viceroy, ill-concealed anger in the faces of Don Martin Alzaga and other Spaniards, annoyance and vexation in the face of his son-in-law Don Roderigo Ponce de Leon; while in the flushed features of many of his younger guests he read a dangerous excitement, which one untoward word might rouse into a storm. Hurriedly he rose from his seat.
"Señores," he said, "Spain has taken upon herself a task which Europe united has failed to accomplish. In this she will need staunch allies, she will find them in the English, therefore fill your glasses once more and honour a repetition of this toast, 'To our friends the English!'"
"To our friends the English!" shouted all the company, rising to their feet, and the toast being duly honoured they left their places and began conversing in groups about the room, upon which Don Gregorio ordered a large pair of folding doors to be thrown open, and invited his guests to adjourn to the sala for coffee, thus preventing the perpetration of any more ambiguous speeches.
From the sala the guests gradually dispersed, many of them being engaged to pass the rest of the night at the house of Don Fausto Velasquez.
"My congratulations on your speech, my friend," said Marcelino to Gordon, as they left the house together.
"Some of them did not half like it," replied Gordon, laughing; "but I said nothing that I have not said to you fifty times."
"True, but it would be treason for any of us to speak so before the Viceroy. The Spanish doctrine is that 'a colony is a slave.'"
"If her colonists were slaves Spain would have lost this colony a year ago. It takes men to beat us."