Gerard, for answer, flung his arm around Denys's neck in silence. --Charles Reade. From "The Cloister and the Hearth." =The Secret of the Jade Tlaloc= "If only this paper on jade were finished!" sighed tall, dignified, blond Dolores. "These notes sound so interesting. 'Jade implements,'" she read, "'found in Mexico--source of mineral not yet discovered--theory that implements are relics of Eastern invasion disproved--jade said to exist in America,' My! I do think jade is the most delightful subject for investigation." "Um-m!" Elsa, who, like her Spanish mother, was small, quick, dark, and adventure-loving, did not consider jade a particularly fascinating topic for study. "Now if--we--a--we--a----" she ruminated. "If we--a----?" Dolores's sentences were always clearly thought out before she spoke them. "If we--a--now if we could finish that paper, we might be able to sell it, you know," Elsa went on. "We certainly haven't an enviably large fortune." She reached into one of the dark pigeon-holes of her father's ponderous desk. "Ook-ook!" she pursed up her full red lips, as she held a yellow scroll from her and gingerly flicked away the dust which had collected upon it since her father's death. "Now here's what I call interesting. An old letter or something, written on agave-leaf paper." From their long association with their father in his archeological researches, the girls had gained a more than superficial knowledge of Aztec customs and antiquities. "'We, the Aztecs, are a proud race,'" she readily translated. "'It is not for the Spaniards to glory in complete victory over us, for though they have conquered our bodies, they have not conquered our spirits. Well may they rejoice in the ruining of our beautiful cities. But when they search, and search in vain, for the wealth which they know has been ours, how they will rage! But their anger shall be as vain as their searching. Those of us who are left will not see the invaders glorying in what was once the splendor of the Aztecs. Rather will we bury, and hide from all future generations, if need be, the secrets of our riches. It is that my descendants may one day scoff at the descendants of those who have made me, who was a prince, a slave, that I am making this record. Among the mountains which the Spaniards have called the "Corderillas" is one in whose top is a hole of great depth, from which it is said, there once flowed streams of liquid fire, the vengeance of the gods upon the people. This mountain stands between two sister mountains of far greater height than itself, and is near the middle of the range.' Why, that might be Ahualtaper, right near here." Elsa had the topography of the country around their home very clearly mapped out in her mind. Dolores nodded. "Go on," she said.