of her hospitality and of his obligation to her husband's "enormous
influence in this part of the country," when she interrupted him by a
low "Hush!" The President was going to make an informal pronouncement.

The Excellentissimo was on his legs. He said only a few words, evidently
deeply felt, and meant perhaps mostly for Avellanos--his old friend--as
to the necessity of unremitting effort to secure the lasting welfare of
the country emerging after this last struggle, he hoped, into a period
of peace and material prosperity.

Mrs. Gould, listening to the mellow, slightly mournful voice, looking
at this rotund, dark, spectacled face, at the short body, obese to the
point of infirmity, thought that this man of delicate and melancholy
mind, physically almost a cripple, coming out of his retirement into a
dangerous strife at the call of his fellows, had the right to speak with
the authority of his self-sacrifice. And yet she was made uneasy. He
was more pathetic than promising, this first civilian Chief of the
State Costaguana had ever known, pronouncing, glass in hand, his simple
watchwords of honesty, peace, respect for law, political good faith
abroad and at home--the safeguards of national honour.

He sat down. During the respectful, appreciative buzz of voices that
followed the speech, General Montero raised a pair of heavy, drooping
eyelids and rolled his eyes with a sort of uneasy dullness from face
to face. The military backwoods hero of the party, though secretly
impressed by the sudden novelties and splendours of his position (he
had never been on board a ship before, and had hardly ever seen the sea
except from a distance), understood by a sort of instinct the advantage
his surly, unpolished attitude of a savage fighter gave him amongst all
these refined Blanco aristocrats. But why was it that nobody was looking