But Flick was not so easily reassured.  “I almost wish she had,” he said gloomily.  “If she don’t go to-day, she will to-morrow or next day.”

“In that case they will not go far,” returned Gallito and rubbed his hands.  His reply had been quick and sharp as the beat of a hammer on an anvil; but now he spoke more softly:  “But will she go at all, my friend?  You, like myself, have ever played for high stakes.  Then you know and I know that this is a world where a man may never look ahead and calculate and say, ’because there is this combination of circumstances, these results will certainly follow,’” he emphasized his words by tapping on the table with his long, gnarled forefinger.  “The wise man never predicts, because he is always aware of that interfering something which we call the unexpected.”  He blew great wreaths of smoke from his mouth and watched them float out on the sun-gilded air.  “We know that my daughter is as obstinate as a pig and as wilful as a burro, therefore we conclude that she will follow her mad heart and go with this fellow.  But there we take no account of the unexpected, eh, Lolita!” welcoming the parrot who waddled out of the open door and came clucking and muttering across the porch toward the two men.

Flick stirred uneasily.  He was in no mood to stand Gallito’s philosophizing, and the Spaniard, seeing it, smiled as he scratched Lolita’s head.  “Two people can not be thrown much together and not show to each other what is in them,” he continued.  “You know that my daughter is proud,” he lifted his own head haughtily here, “and you know that above everything her pride lies in the fact that no man can scorn her.  But this that Hanson does not believe.”

This roused Flick to a sudden interest, some light came into his heavy eyes, a dull flush rose on his cheek.  “What do you mean?” he asked.

“This:  Yesterday morning when that hound sat there and talked to me there was something I said which made him forget himself in anger, and he said:  ‘Me!  The Black Pearl smirched by me!’”

“He said that?” Flick’s tones had never been more drawlingly soft, but there was a quality in them, an electric and ominous vibration, which boded ill for Hanson.

Gallito nodded.  “It is in his mind.  It is his thought about her.  If he said it to me when he forgot himself he will surely say it to her.”

“And you let him say it, Gallito?  You let him go away safe after saying it?” Flick looked at him amazed.

“I think far ahead,” replied the older man.  “It is the custom of a lifetime.  To act on the moment is to continually regret.  Do you think I want my daughter’s tears and reproaches for the rest of my life?  No, I wish to spend my old age free of women and their mischief.  This Hanson must talk, talk, talk.  Therefore, if you give him rope enough he will hang himself before any woman’s eyes.”

“But when?” asked Flick, and that vibration still lingered in his voice.  “I am not so patient as you, Gallito.”