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at the beginning of the month I am going with my division to Guadalajara: now there is a new Governor. So I shall be quite near too.”

“That will be nice,” said.

“You think so?” he asked quickly.

“Yes,” she said, on her guard, looking at him slowly. “I should be sorry to lose touch with Don Ramón and you.”

He had a little tension on his brow, haughty, unwilling, conceited, and at the same time, yearning and desirous.

“You like Don Ramón very much?” he said. “You want to know him more?”

There was a peculiar anxiety in his voice.

“Yes,” she said. “One knows so few people in the world nowadays, that one can respect—and fear a little. I am a little afraid of Don Ramón: and I have the greatest respect for him—” she ended on a hot note of sincerity.

“It is good!” he said. “It is very good. You may respect him more than any other man in the world.”

“Perhaps that is true,” she said, turning her eyes slowly to his.

“Yes! Yes!” he cried impatiently. “It is true. You will find out later. And Ramón likes you. He told me to ask you to come to the lake. When you come to Sayula, when you are coming, write to him, and no doubt he can tell you about a house, and all those things.”

“Shall I?” she said, hesitant.

“Yes. Yes! of course, we say what we mean.”

Curious little man, with his odd, inflammable hauteur and conceit, something burning inside him, that gave him no peace. He had an almost childish faith in the other man. And yet she was not sure that he did not, in some corner of his soul, resent Ramón somewhat.

Kate set off by the night train for the west, with Villiers. The one Pullman coach was full: people going to Guadalajara and Colima and the coast. There were three military officers, rather shy in their new uniforms, and rather swaggering at the same time, making eyes at the empty air, as if they felt they were conspicuous, and sitting quickly in their seats, as if to obliterate themselves. There were two country farmers or ranchers, in tight trousers and cart-wheel hats stitched with silver. One was a tall man with a