‘I have never found it very serious, señorita,’ he answered. ‘There is usually a smile in human affairs if one takes the trouble to look for it.’ ‘Have you always found it so?’ He did not answer at once, pausing to lift the branch of a mimosa tree that hung in yellow profusion across the pathway. ‘Yes, señorita, I think so,’ he answered at length, slowly. There was a sense of eternal restfulness in this old Moorish garden which acted as a brake on the thoughts, and made conversation halt and drag in an Oriental way that Europeans rarely understand. ‘And yet you say you remember your father’s death?’ ‘He made a joke to the doctor, señorita, and was not afraid.’ Estella smiled in a queer way, and then looked grave again. ‘And you have always been poor, you say, sometimes almost starving?’ ‘Yes—always poor, deadly poor, señorita,’ answered Conyngham with a gay laugh; ‘and since I have been on my own resources frequently—well, very hungry. The appetite has been large and the resources have been small. But when I get into the Spanish army they will no doubt make me a general, and all will be well.’ He laughed again, and slipped his hand into his jacket pocket. ‘See here,’ he said, ‘your father’s recommendation to General Espartero in a confidential letter.’ But the envelope he produced was that pink one which the man called Larralde had given him at Algeciras. ‘No—it is not that,’ he said, searching in another pocket. ‘Ah! here it is—addressed to General Espartero, Duke of Vittoria.’ He showed her the superscription, which she read with a little inclination of the head, as if in salutation of the great name written there. The greatest names are those that men have made for themselves. Conyngham replaced the two letters in his pocket and almost immediately asked: ‘Do you know anyone called Barenna in Ronda, señorita?’ thereby proving that General Espartero would do ill to give him an appointment requiring even the earliest rudiments of diplomacy. ‘Julia Barenna is my cousin. Her mother was my mother’s sister. Do you know them, Señor Conyngham?’ ‘Oh no,’ answered Conyngham, truthfully enough. ‘I met a man who knows them. Do they live in Ronda?’ ‘No; their house is on the Cordova road, about half a league from the Customs station.’ Estella was not by nature curious, and asked no questions. Some who knew the Barennas would have been glad to claim acquaintance with General Vincente and his daughter, but could not do so. For the Captain-General moved in a circle not far removed from the Queen Regent herself, and mixed but little in the society of Ronda, where, for the time being, he held a command.