“I don’t ask anybody to believe the story,” she said, resentfully.  “All the same, it is true.  There are pieces of Spanish gold and silver coins, in boxes bound with iron and fitted with hasps and staples; packages of gems; pearls from the Caribbean as large as plums.  Oh?  Sebastian told me all about it.”

“Of course, of course!  I shall not argue the matter."’ Don Mario dismissed the subject with a wave of his plump hand.  “Now, Dona Isabel—­”

“As if it were not enough to lose that treasure,” the widow continued, stormily, “the Government must free all our slaves.  Tse!  Tse!  And now that there is no longer a profit in sugar, my plantations—­”

“No profit in sugar?  What are you saying?” queried the caller.

“Oh, you have a way of prospering!  What touches your fingers turns to gold.  But you are not at the mercy of an administrador.”

“Precisely!  I am my own manager.  If your crops do not pay, then Pancho Cueto is cheating you.  He is capable of it.  Get rid of him.  But I didn’t come here to talk about Esteban’s hidden treasure, nor his plantations, nor Pancho Cueto.  I came here to talk about your step-daughter, Rosa.”

“So?” Dona Isabel looked up quickly.

“She interests me.  She is more beautiful than the stars.”  Don Mario rolled his eyes toward the high ceiling, which, like the sky, was tinted a vivid cerulean blue.  “She personifies every virtue; she is—­delectable.”  He pursed his wet lips, daintily picked a kiss from between them with his thumb and finger, and snapped it into the air.

Inasmuch as Isabel had always hated the girl venomously, she did not trust herself to comment upon her caller’s enthusiasm.

“She is now eighteen,” the fat suitor went on, ecstatically, “and so altogether charming—­But why waste time in pretty speeches?  I have decided to marry her.”

De Castano plucked a heavily scented silk handkerchief from his pocket and wiped a beading of moisture from his brow and upper lip.  He had a habit of perspiring when roused from his usual lethargy.

“Rosa has a will of her own,” guardedly ventured the stepmother.

Don Mario broke out, testily:  “Naturally; so have we all.  Now let us speak plainly.  You know me.  I am a person of importance.  I am rich enough to afford what I want, and I pay well.  You understand?  Well, then, you are Rosa’s guardian and you can bend her to your desires.”

“If that were only so!” exclaimed the woman.  “She and Esteban—­ what children!  What tempers!—­Just like their father’s!  They have never liked me; they disobey me at every opportunity; they exercise the most diabolical ingenuity in making my life miserable.  They were to be their father’s heirs, you know, and they blame me for his death, for our poverty, and for all the other misfortunes that have overtaken us.  We live like cats and dogs.”

Don Mario had been drumming his fat fingers impatiently upon the arm of his chair.  Now he exclaimed: