I can only echo your prayer that she may not suffer as her
mother did. In name she is not a de la Barca, and perhaps destiny will
spare her on that account."
He glanced keenly at me and smiled. "Perhaps you are thinking more of
Dolores than of Margarita just now," he said. "Let me warn you of your
danger there, my young friend. She is already promised to another."
Absurdly unreasonable as it may seem, I felt a jealous pang at that
information; but then, of course, we are _not_ reasonable beings,
whatever the philosophers say.
I laughed, not very gaily, I must confess, and answered that there was
no need to warn me, as Dolores would never be more to me than a very
dear friend.
Even then I did not tell him that I was a married man; for often in
the Banda Oriental I did not quite seem to know how to mix my truth
and lies, and so preferred to hold my tongue. In this instance, as
subsequent events proved, I held it not wisely but too well. The open
man, with no secrets from the world, often enough escapes disasters
which overtake your very discreet person, who acts on the old adage
that speech was given to us to conceal our thoughts.
CHAPTER XVII
With a horse to travel on, and my arm so much better that the sling
supporting it was worn rather for ornament than use, there was nothing
except that promise not to run away immediately to detain me longer
in the pleasant retreat of the Casa Blanca; nothing, that is, had I
been a man of gutta-percha or cast-iron; being only a creature of
clay--very impressionable clay as it happened--I could not persuade
myself that I was quite well enough to start on that long ride over
a disturbed country.
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