“Well, lad,” said my uncle, when, refreshed by a pleasant bath and a glass or two of goodly wine with the meal spread for me, I sat with him in the shaded room, my aunt ­a pleasant, comely, Englishwoman ­seated with her daughter, working by one of the open windows ­“well, lad, people don’t come a four or five thousand miles’ journey on purpose to pay visits.  What have you got in your eye?”

“Frankly, Uncle,” I said, “I don’t know.  I could not rest at home, and felt that I must go abroad; and now I must say that I am glad of my resolution.”

I thought at first, as I was speaking, of the beautiful scenery, but in the latter part of my speech I was looking towards Lilla, and for a moment our eyes met.

My uncle shook his head as I finished speaking.

“Soap-boiling isn’t a pleasant trade, Harry,” he said; “but as the old saying goes, `Dirty work brings clean money.’  There’s always been a comfortable home for you, hasn’t there?”

“Yes, Uncle,” I said impatiently.

“And plenty to eat, and drink, and wear?”

“Yes, Uncle.”

“And your father kept you at good schools till you were seventeen or eighteen?”

“Yes, Uncle.”

“Then ­it’s plain speaking, but I must give it to you, Harry ­you were a young fool to leave it all.  You were like the dog with the shadow, you’ve dropped a good mouthful of meat to grasp at nothing.  You’d have done better sticking to the soap.”

“I couldn’t, Uncle,” I exclaimed.

“Ah! that’s what all you young donkeys say.  Only to think of it ­ throwing up the chance of a good, sure trade!”

“But, my dear uncle, I was so unsuited for it, though I am ready enough to work.  If you can give me employment, pray do so, for do not think I have come to be a burden to you.”

“My dear boy,” he said gravely, “I don’t think anything of the sort.  You are welcome here; and we owe you, it seems, the life of our dear child, though what your share was in saving her I don’t know.  Don’t think, though, that we are not glad to see you.  There,” he said, laughing, “there’s your aunt ready again to throw her arms around your neck, you see.”

Mrs Landell had dropped her work and crossed over to lay her hand upon my shoulder, while there was a tear ­one bright, gem-like tear of gratitude ­sparkling in Lilla’s eye as she looked up timidly from her work, and that stupid young heart of mine gave a tremendous thump against my chest.

There was a pause then for a few minutes, when, in a thick, husky voice, I once more tried to speak.

“I’m sure,” I said, “your welcome is warmer than I deserve; and indeed, Uncle, I wish to be no burden to you.  If you would rather not employ me, say so frankly; but perhaps you might, all the same, put me in the way of getting on as you have done.”

“As I have done!” he said laughing.  “I see, my dear boy, you look at things with just the same eyes that I did when I came over years ago.  It’s a lovely country, isn’t it, Harry?”

“Glorious!” I cried excitedly.

“Yes,” he said sadly; “glorious as the gilded frame of a mirror, all lustre and brightness, while underneath it is composition, and wood, and ill-smelling glue.  Why, my dear boy, I am only living from hand to mouth.  This looks, of course, all very bright and beautiful to you, and a wonderful contrast to hazy, foggy, cold old England ­Heaven bless it!  But fire-flies, and humming-birds, and golden sunshine, and gaily-painted blossoms are not victuals and drink, Harry; and, besides, when you set to and earn your victuals and drink, you don’t know but what they will all be taken away from you.  We’ve no laws here, my lad, worth a rush.  We’re a patriotic people here, with a great love of our country ­we Spanish, half-bred republican heroes,” he said bitterly, “and we love that country so well, Harry, that we are always murdering and enriching it with the blood of its best men.  It might be a glorious place, but man curses it, and we are always having republican struggles, and bloodshed, and misery.  We are continually having new presidents, here, my lad; and after being ruined three times, burned out twice, and saving my life by the skin of my teeth, the bright flowers and great green leaves seem to be powdered with ashes, and I’d gladly, any day, change this beautiful place, with its rich plantations, for fifty acres of land in one of the shires at home.”

“But don’t you take rather a gloomy view of it all, Uncle?” I said, as I looked at him curiously.

But to my great discomfiture he burst out laughing, for he had read my thoughts exactly.

“My liver is as sound as yours, Harry, my boy,” he said; “and I don’t believe that there’s a heartier man within fifty miles.  No, my lad, I’m not jaundiced.  There’s no real prosperity here.  The people are a lazy, loafing set, and never happy but when they are in hot water.  There’s the old, proud hidalgo blood mixed up in their veins; they are too grand to work ­too lazy to wash themselves.  There isn’t a decent fellow in the neighbourhood, except one, and his name is Garcia ­eh, Lill?” he said, laughing.

Lilla’s face crimsoned as she bent over her work, while a few minutes after she rose and whispered to Mrs Landell.

“You must excuse me, Harry,” said my aunt, rising.  “Lilla is unwell; the shock has been too much for her.”

The next moment I was alone with my uncle, who proceeded in the same bitter strain: 

“Yes, my lad, commerce is all nohow here ­everything’s sluggish, and I cannot see how matters are to mend.  I’m glad to see you ­heartily glad you have come.  Stay with us a few months if you are determined upon a colonial life; see all you can of the country and judge for yourself; but Heaven forbid that I should counsel my sister’s child to settle in such a revolutionary place!”

I was not long in finding out the truth of my uncle’s words.  The place was volcanic, and earthquakes of no uncommon occurrence; but Nature in the soil was not one half as bad as Nature in the human race ­Spanish half-blood and Indian ­with which she had peopled the region, for they were, to a man, stuffed with explosive material, which the spark of some speaker’s language was always liable to explode.

But I was delighted with the climate, in spite of the heat; and during the calm, cool evenings, when the moon was glancing through the trees, bright, pure, and silvery, again and again I thought of how happy I could be there but for one thing.

That one thing was not the nature of the people nor their revolutionary outbursts, for I may as well own that commerce or property had little hold upon my thoughts until I found how necessary the latter was for my success.  My sole thought in those early days, and the one thing that troubled me, was the constant presence of my uncle’s wealthy neighbour, Pablo Garcia.

It was plain enough that he had been for months past a visitor, and that he had been looked upon as a suitor for Lilla’s hand; but I could not discover whether she favoured him or no, for after meeting him a few times his very presence, with his calm, supercilious treatment of one whom he evidently hated from the bottom of his soul, was so galling to me, that upon his appearance I used to go out and ramble away for hours together, seeking the wilder wooded parts, and the precipitous spurs of the mountains, climbing higher and higher, till more than once in some lonely spot I came upon some trace of a bygone civilisation ­ruined temple, or palace of grand proportions, but now overthrown and crumbling into dust, with the dense vegetation of the region springing up around, and in many places so covering it that it was only by accident that I discovered, in the darkened twilight of the leafy shade, column or mouldering wall, and then sat down to wonder and try and think out of the histories of the past who were the people that had left these traces of a former grandeur, and then over some carven stone light would spring to my understanding ­a light that brought with it a thrill of hope.  Then I would return, as night threatened to hide the track, back to my uncle’s, to be treated coldly, as I thought, by Lilla, while more than once it seemed that my uncle gazed upon me in a troubled way.