But"--he stopped, and his simple, honest face
assumed an air of profound and sagacious cunning--"I am glad to
talk about it with you, who of course are perfectly familiar with
the affair. I shall now be able to know what to say. My word, my
friend, has some weight here, and I shall use it. And now you
shall tell me WHO is our lovely friend, and WHO were her parents
and her kindred in her own home. Her associates here, you possibly
know, are an impossible colonel and his never-before-approached
valet, with some South American Indian planters, and, I believe, a
pork-butcher's daughter. But of THEM--it makes nothing. Tell me
of HER people."
With his kindly serious face within a few inches of Paul's, and
sympathizing curiosity beaming from his pince-nez, he obliged the
wretched and conscience-stricken Hathaway to respond with a
detailed account of Yerba's parentage as projected by herself and
indorsed by Colonel Pendleton. He dwelt somewhat particularly on
the romantic character of the Trust, hoping to draw the General's
attention away from the question of relationship, but he was
chagrined to find that the honest warrior evidently confounded the
Trust with some eleemosynary institution and sympathetically
glossed it over.
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