He knew
her too well for that. He had a wholesome respect, not to say fear, of
her; for when all else had failed, it was she who had arranged his escape
from Spain, and who almost saved Carvillho Gonzales from being shot. She
could have saved Gonzales, might have saved him, would have saved him,
had she not been obliged to save her father. In the circumstances she
could not save both.
Before the week was out Jean Jacques was possessed of as fine a tale of
political persecution as mind could conceive, and, told as it was by
Sebastian Dolores, his daughter did not seek to alter it, for she had her
own purposes, and they were mixed. These refugees needed a friend, for
they would land in Canada with only a few dollars, and Carmen Dolores
loved her father well enough not to wish to see him again in such
distress as he had endured in Cadiz. Also, Jean Jacques, the young,
verdant, impressionable French Catholic, was like her Carvillho Gonzales,
and she had loved her Carvillho in her own way very passionately,
and--this much to her credit--quite chastely. So that she had no
compunction in drawing the young money-master to her side, and keeping
him there by such arts as such a woman possesses. These are remarkable
after their kind. They are combined of a frankness as to the emotions,
and such outer concessions to physical sensations, as make a painful
combination against a mere man's caution; even when that caution has a
Norman origin.
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