The Mexican assented; he always assented to whatever she advanced; he did so because he considered her a fool and incapable of reasoning.  Moreover, he was not anxious to see half of this estate drop into the hands of Garcia, believing that whatever Clara kept for herself would shortly be his own by right of marriage.

“You are the greatest woman of our times,” he said, stepping backward a pace or two and surveying her as if she were a cathedral.  “I should never have thought of those ideas.  You ought to be a legislator and reform our laws.”

“I never had a doubt that you would agree with me, Mr. Coronado,” returned the gratified Aunt Maria.  “Well, so does Clara; at least I trust so,” she hesitated.  “Now as to the sum which our good Garcia should receive.  I have settled upon thirty thousand dollars.  In his hands, you know, it would soon be a hundred and fifty thousand; that is to say, practically speaking, it would be half the estate.”

“Certainly,” bowed Coronado, meanwhile thinking, “You old ass!” “And my little cousin is of your opinion, I trust?” he added.

“Well—­not quite—­as yet,” candidly admitted Aunt Maria.  “But she is coming to it.  I have no sort of doubt that she will end there.”

So Coronado had learned nothing as yet of Clara’s opinions.  As he sauntered away to find Garcia, he queried whether he had best torment him with this unauthorized babble of Mrs. Stanley.  On the whole, yes; it might bring him down to reasonable terms; the rapacious old man was expecting too large a slice of the dead Munoz.  So he told his tale, giving it out as something which could be depended on, but increasing the thirty thousand dollars to fifty thousand, on his own responsibility.  To his alarm Garcia broke out in a venomous rage, calling everybody pigs, dogs, toads, etc.; and crying and cursing alternately.

“Fifty thousand piasters!” he squeaked, tottering about the room on his short weak legs and wringing his hands, so that he looked like a fat dog walking on his hind feet.  “Fifty thousand piasters!  O Madre de Dios!  It is nothing.  It is nothing.  It will not save me from ruin.  It will not cover my debts.  I shall be sold out.  I am ruined.  Fifty thousand piasters!  O Madre de Dios!”

Fifty thousand dollars would have left him more than solvent; but ten times that sum would not have satisfied his grasping soul.

Coronado saw that he had made a blunder, and sought to rectify it by lying copiously.  He averred that he had been merely trying his uncle; he begged his pardon for this absurd and ill-timed joke; he admitted that he was a pig and a dog and everything else ignoble; he should not have trifled with the feelings of his benefactor, his more than father; those feelings were to him sacred, and should be held so henceforward and forever.

But he was not believed.  He could fool the old man sometimes, but not on this occasion.  Garcia, greedy and anxious, apt by nature to see the dark side of things, judged that the fifty-thousand-dollar story was the true one.  Although he pretended at last to accept Coronado’s explanation for fact, he remained at bottom unconvinced, and showed it in his swollen and trembling visage.