“Your pardon, senora, but I am just now very little interested in your domestic relations; they do not thrill me—­as my own prospective happiness does.  What you say about Rosa only makes me more eager, for I loathe a sleepy woman.  Now tell me, is she—­Has she any-affairs of the heart?”

“N-no, unless perhaps a flirtation with that young American, Juan O’Reilly.”  Dona Isabel gave the name its Spanish pronunciation of “O’Rail-ye.”

“Juan O’Reilly?  O’Reilly?  Oh yes!  But what has he to offer a woman?  He is little more than a clerk.”

“That is what I tell her.  Oh, it hasn’t gone far as yet.”

“Good!” Don Mario rose to leave, for the exertion of his ride had made him thirsty.  “You may name your own reward for helping me and I will pay it the day Rosa marries me.  Now kindly advise her of my intentions and tell her I shall come to see her soon.”

It was quite true that Johnnie O’Reilly—­or “The O’Reilly,” as his friends called him—­had little in the way of worldly advantage to offer any girl, and it was precisely because of this fact that he had accepted a position here in Cuba, where, from the very nature of things, promotion was likely to be more rapid than in the New York office of his firm.  He had come to this out-of-the-way place prepared to live the lonely life of an exile, if an O’Reilly could be lonely anywhere, and for a brief time he had been glum enough.

But the O’Reillys, from time immemorial, had been born and bred to exile; it was their breath, their meat and drink, and this particular member of the clan thrived upon it quite as well as had the other Johnnies and Michaels and Andys who had journeyed to far shores.  The O’Reillys were audacious men, a bit too heedless of their own good, perhaps; a bit too light-hearted readily to impress a grave world with their varied abilities, but sterling men, for all that, ambitious men, men with lime in their bones and possessed of a high and ready chivalry that made friends for them wherever their wandering feet strayed.  Spain, France, and the two Americas had welcomed O’Reillys of one sort or another; even Cuba had the family name written large upon her scroll.  So Johnnie, of New York and Matanzas, although at first he felt himself a stranger in a strange land, was not so considered by the Cubans.

A dancing eye speaks every language; a singing heart gathers its own audience.  Before the young Irish-American had more than a bowing acquaintance with the commonest Spanish verbs he had a calling acquaintance with some of the most exclusive people of Matanzas.  He puzzled them, to be sure, for they could not fathom the reason for his ever-bubbling gladness, but they strove to catch its secret, and, striving, they made friends with him.  O’Reilly did not puzzle their daughters nearly so much:  more than one aristocratic senorita felt sure that she quite understood the tall, blond stranger with the laughing eyes, or could understand him if he gave her half a chance, and so, as had been the case with other O’Reillys in other lands, Johnnie’s exile became no exile at all.  He had adjusted himself serenely to his surroundings when Rosa Varona returned from school, but with her coming, away went all his complacency.  His contentment vanished; he experienced a total change in his opinions, his hopes, and his ambitions.