Derrick picked up Pepito and followed the tall and stately figure up the drive. Presently they came in sight of the _casa_. Donna Elvira ascended slowly the broad steps of the verandah and seated herself in a satin-cushioned rocking-chair. She was silent and immovable for so long a space that Derrick was inclined to think that she had really forgotten his presence; then, slowly, she turned her head and looked at him, with a kind of masked scrutiny. "What is your name, and whence do you come, senor?" she asked, in a voice which was low and grave. Derrick told her that his name was Sydney Green, and that he came from London. "To seek your fortune here, as so many English do?" she inquired. "For that--and other reasons, my lady--I mean, senora," replied Derrick. "And you have not found it?" she said, with a glance at his worn clothes and haggard face. Derrick shrugged his shoulders; there was no need for words. "It is often so," remarked Donna Elvira. "There are many English here in this country. Was it wise to leave your native land--your parents, for all the ills that might befall you in a strange country?" "It was not," admitted Derrick, with a smile. At the smile, which transformed his face, Donna Elvira's long, exquisitely-shaped hands closed spasmodically on the arms of the chair and a strange expression flashed for an instant across her face; it was an expression almost of fear, of the suddenly-awakened memory of a thing painful, poignant. The expression lasted only for an instant; the next, her face was quite calm again. "Had you quarrelled with your parents?" she asked, with a kind of polite interest. "I have no parents," said Derrick; "they are dead." She was silent for a moment; then she said: "That is sad; but death is the common lot." There was another pause; then she said: "Don Jose tells me that you are seeking employment, but that he could find you none. Will you tell me what it is that you have done, the work you were accustomed to do?" "Well, I've been all sorts of things," said Derrick, reluctantly enough. "By profession I'm an engineer, I suppose; but----" He paused. "Well, I had a stroke of bad luck in England, and I had to leave it and chuck up my profession. Since then I've been a jack-of-all-trades." "What you have told me has interested me," Donna Elvira said. "Besides," she added, "I have been in England--I had friends there. It is because of this that I desire to help you, senor. You say that you are an engineer. I think there should be work for you here on the _estancia_; there is machinery." Derrick sat up with a sudden lightening of the heart. "We have to send to a distance, sometimes as far as Buenos Ayres, when we need repairs. Do you think you can undertake this work? Besides--you are well educated, of course, as is the English fashion for gentlemen?"