The young man nodded vigorously. "Indeed I am--with the sweetest girl in Cuba. That's the whole trouble. That's why I'm hurrying home to resign before I'm fired." Not daring to look too long or too deeply into Rosa Varona's eyes until she had taken in the whole truth, he waited, staring at his feet. "I'm sort of glad it has come to a show-down and I can speak out. I'm hoping she'll miss me." After a moment he ventured, "Will she--er--will you, Rosa?" "I? Miss you?" Rosa lifted her brows in pretended amazement. Then she tipped her head daintily to one side, as if weighing his question earnestly. "You are amusing, of course, but--I won't have much time to think about you, for I am so soon to be married." "Married? WHAT?" O'Reilly started violently, and the girl exclaimed, with well-feigned concern: "Oh, senor! You have wounded yourself again on that thorn-bush. This place is growing up to brambles." "It wasn't my finger! Something pierced me through the heart. MARRIED? Nonsense!" "Indeed! Do you think I'm so ugly nobody would have me?" "Good Lord! You--" O'Reilly swallowed hard. "I won't tell you the truth when you know it so well." "The richest man in Matanzas asked for my hand this very afternoon." "Who? Mario de Castano?" "Yes." O'Reilly laughed with relief, and though Rosa tried to look offended, she was forced to smile. "He's fat, I know," she admitted, "and he makes funny noises when he breathes; but he is richer than Croesus, and I adore rich men." "I hate 'em!" announced O'Reilly. Then for a second time he took Rosa's dimpled hand, saying, earnestly: "I'm sure you know now why I make love so badly, dear. It's my Irish conscience. And you'll wait until I come back, won't you?" "Will you be gone--very long?" she asked. O'Reilly looked deeply now into the dark eyes turned to his, and found that at last there was no coquetry in them anywhere--nothing but a lonesome, hungry yearning--and with a glad, incoherent exclamation he held out his arms. Rosa Varona crept into them; then with a sigh she upturned her lips to his. "I'll wait forever," she said. IV RETRIBUTION Although for a long time Dona Isabel had been sure in her own mind that Pancho Cueto, her administrador, was robbing her, she had never mustered courage to call him to a reckoning. And there was a reason for her cowardice. Nevertheless, De Castano's blunt accusation, coupled with her own urgent needs, served to fix her resolution, and on the day after the merchant's visit she sent for the overseer, who at the time was living on one of the plantations.