"Ah, with you foreigners it is just the same--land or water," he
continued. "You can even smoke--what a calm head and quiet stomach you
must have! But what puzzles me is this, senor; how you, a foreigner,
come to be travelling with native women. Now, there is that beautiful
young senora with the violet eyes, who can she be?"
"She is my wife, old man," said I, laughing, a little amused at his
curiosity.
"Ah, you are married then--so young? She is beautiful, graceful, well
educated, the daughter of wealthy parents, no doubt, but frail, frail,
senor; and some day, not a very distant day--but why should I predict
sorrow to a gay heart? Only her face, senor, is strange to me; it does
not recall the features of any Oriental family I know."
"That is easily explained," I said, surprised at his shrewdness, "she
is an Argentine, not an Oriental."
"Ah, that explains it," he said, taking another long pull at the bottle.
"As for the other senora with you, I need not ask you who _she_
is."
"Why, who is she?" I returned.
"A Peralta, if there ever was one," he returned confidently.
His reply disturbed me not a little, for, after all my precautions,
this old man had perhaps been sent to follow Demetria.
"Yes," he continued, with an evident pride in his knowledge of families
and faces which tended to allay my suspicions; "a Peralta and not a
Madariaga, nor a Sanchez, nor a Zelaya, nor an Ibarra.
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