“You will find her changed,” continued Coronado, when he had submitted to the old man’s persistence.  “She has grown thinner and sadder.  You must not notice it, however; you must compliment her on her health.”

“What is she taking?” whispered Garcia.

“The less said, the better.  My dear uncle, you must know nothing.  Do not talk of it.  The walls have ears.”

“I know something that would be both safe and sure,” persisted the old man in a still lower whisper.

“Leave all with me,” answered Coronado, waving his hand authoritatively.  “Too many cooks spoil the broth.  What has begun well will end well.”

After a time the two men went down to a shady veranda which half encircled the house, and found Mrs. Stanley taking an accidental siesta on a sort of lounge or sofa.  Being a light sleeper, like many other active-minded people, she awoke at their approach and sat up to give reception.

“Mrs. Stanley, this is my uncle Garcia, my more than father,” bowed Coronado.

“I have not forgotten him,” replied Aunt Maria, who indeed was not likely to forget that mottled face, dyed blue with nitrate of silver.

Warmly shaking the puffy hand of the old toad, and doing her very best to smile upon him, she said, “How do you do, Mr. Garcia?  I hope you are well.  Mr. Coronado, do tell him that, and that I am rejoiced to see him.”

Garcia’s snaky glance just rose to the honest woman’s face, and then crawled hurriedly all about the veranda, as if trying to hide in corners.  Thanks to Coronado’s fluency and invention, there was a mutually satisfactory conversation between the couple.  He amplified the lady’s compliments and then amplified the Mexican’s compliments, until each looked upon the other as a person of unusual intelligence and a fast friend, Aunt Maria, however, being much the more thoroughly humbugged of the two.

“My uncle has come on urgent mercantile business, and he crowds in a few days with us,” Coronado presently explained.  “I have told him of my little cousin’s good fortune, and he is delighted.”

“I am so glad to hear it,” said Mrs. Stanley.  “What an excellent old man he is, to be sure!  And you are just like him, Mr. Coronado—­just as good and unselfish.”

“You overestimate me,” answered Coronado, with a smile which was almost ironical.

Before long Clara appeared.  Garcia’s eye darted a look at her which was like the spring of an adder, dwelling for just a second on the girl’s face, and then scuttling off in an uncleanly, poisonous way for hiding corners.  He saw that she was thin, and believed to a certain extent in Coronado’s hints of poison, so that his glance was more cowardly than ordinary.

Liking the man not overmuch, but pleased to see a face which had been familiar to her childhood, and believing that she owed him large reparation for her grandfather’s will, Clara advanced cordially to the old sinner.