There was a St. Louis merchant whom Bryan had met at Columbus the winter when he represented the district in the Legislature. From the first they seemed to have been great friends. When our pretty Hester made her winter visit to Columbus, to stay with Mrs. Dunn, this de Alcantara saw her,--the Duke de Alcantara, the Columbus girls called him, mostly in joke, but partly in mystery; for it was whispered that he might be a duke in Spain if he chose to be. This was certain,--that he was very rich--very. Those who disliked him most--and some people disliked him very much--had to own that he was very rich. Black-haired he was, very dark of complexion, and, Horace said, and all the party of haters, odious in expression. But whether Horace would have said that, had the two not crossed each other's lines, who shall say? The truth is that Baltasar de Alcantara was a great diamond merchant. And now the mystery appeared. Old Bryan said he could not talk of weddings, but soon enough he began to talk of one. Baltasar de Alcantara wanted to marry our Hester. This she had guessed at; but she had thought she had put a very summary end to it. She had said to him squarely, the last time she saw him, "Do you not know that I am engaged to be married, Mr. de Alcantara?" She had supposed that would be enough. She had not thought of the Oriental fashion of buying your wife; but Baltasar de Alcantara had. There must have been Eastern blood in him. Horace Ray, after he heard of the new proposal of marriage, said his rival had a nose which looked Eastern,--arched, but not Roman. However it was about the nose, the diamond merchant offered to buy our Hester. If she would marry him, or if old Bryan would make her marry him, he would lend old Bryan all the money he wanted, up to fifty thousand dollars, on his personal security; he would take at their face all old Bryan's worthless stock in the Green Bay Iron Company, and he would make old Bryan vice-president in the Cattaraugus and Tallahassee Railroad, of which he was a managing director. All this statement old Bryan repeated to our Hester.