“Ah, you are married then--so young? She is beautiful, graceful, well educated, the daughter of wealthy parents, no doubt, but frail, frail, señor; and some day, not a very distant day--but why should I predict sorrow to a gay heart? Only her face, señor, is strange to me; it does not recall the features of any Oriental family I know.” “That is easily explained,” I said, surprised at his shrewdness, “she is an Argentine, not an Oriental.” “Ah, that explains it,” he said, taking another long pull at the bottle. “As for the other señora with you, I need not ask you who _she_ is.” “Why, who is she?” I returned. “A Peralta, if there ever was one,” he returned confidently. His reply disturbed me not a little, for, after all my precautions, this old man had perhaps been sent to follow Demetria. “Yes,” he continued, with an evident pride in his knowledge of families and faces which tended to allay my suspicions; “a Peralta and not a Madariaga, nor a Sanchez, nor a Zelaya, nor an Ibarra. Do I not know a Peralta when I see one?” And here he laughed scornfully at the absurdity of such an idea. “Tell me,” I said, “how do you know a Peralta?” “The question!” he exclaimed. “You are a Frenchman or a German from over the sea, and do not understand these things. Have I borne arms forty years in my country's service not to know a Peralta! On earth they are with me; if I go to Heaven I meet them there, and in Hell I see them; for when have I charged into the hottest of the fight and have not found a Peralta there before me? But I am speaking of the past, señor; for now I am also like one that has been left on the field forgotten--left for the vultures and foxes. You will no longer find them walking on the earth; only where men have rushed together sword in hand you will find their bones. Ah, friend!” And here, overcome with sad memories, the ancient warrior took another drink from his bottle. “They cannot all be dead,” said I, “if, as you imagine, the señora travelling with me is a Peralta.” “As I imagine!” he repeated scornfully. “Do I not know what I am talking about, young sir? They are dead, I tell you--dead as the past, dead as Oriental independence and honour. Did I not ride into the fight at Gil de los Medanos with the last of the Peraltas, Calixto, when he received his baptism of blood? Fifteen years old, señor, only fifteen, when he galloped into the fight, for he had the light heart, the brave spirit, and the hand swift to strike of a Peralta. And after the fight our colonel, Santa Coloma, who was killed the other day at San Paulo, embraced the boy before all the troops. He is dead, señor, and with Calixto died the house of Peralta.” “You knew Santa Coloma, then?” I said. “But you are mistaken, he was not killed at San Paulo, he made his escape.” “So they say--the ignorant ones,” he returned. “But he is dead, for he loved his country, and all who are of that mind are slain. How should he escape?”