He looked up from his unhappy musings to find a gigantic, barefooted negro standing before him. The slave was middle-aged; his kinky hair was growing gray; but he was of superb proportions, and the muscles which showed through the rents in his cotton garments were as smooth and supple as those of a stripling. His black face was puckered with grief, as he began: "Master, is it true that Dona Rosa--" The fellow choked.
"Yes," Esteban nodded, wearily, "she is dead, Sebastian."
Tears came to Sebastian's eyes and overflowed his cheeks; he stood motionless, striving to voice his sympathy. At length he said: "She was too good for this world. God was jealous and took her to Paradise."
The widowed man cried out, angrily: "Paradise! What is this but paradise?" He stared with resentful eyes at the beauty round about him. "See! The Yumuri!" Don Esteban flung a long arm outward. "Do you think there is a sight like that in heaven? And yonder--" He turned to the harbor far below, with its fleet of sailing-ships resting like a flock of gulls upon a sea of quicksilver. Beyond the bay, twenty miles distant, a range of hazy mountains hid the horizon. Facing to the south, Esteban looked up the full length of the valley of the San Juan, clear to the majestic Pan de Matanzas, a wonderful sight indeed; then his eyes returned, as they always did, to the Yumuri, Valley of Delight. "Paradise indeed!" he muttered. "I gave her everything. She gained nothing by dying."
With a grave thoughtfulness which proved him superior to the ordinary slave, Sebastian replied: "True! She had all that any woman's heart could desire, but in return for your goodness she gave you children. You have lost her, but you have gained an heir, and a beautiful girl baby who will grow to be another Dona Rosa. I grieved as you grieve, once upon a time, for my woman died in childbirth, too. You remember? But my daughter lives, and she has brought sunshine into my old age. That is the purpose of children." He paused and shifted his weight uncertainly, digging his stiff black toes into the dirt. After a time he said, slowly: "Excellency! Now, about the--well--?"
"Yes. What about it?" Esteban lifted smoldering eyes.
"Did the Dona Rosa confide her share of the secret to any one? Those priests and those doctors, you know--?"
"She died without speaking."
"Then it rests between you and me?"
"It does, unless you have babbled."
"Master!" Sebastian drew himself up and there was real dignity in his black face.
"Understand, my whole fortune is there--everything, even to the deeds of patent for the plantations. If I thought there was danger of your betraying me I would have your tongue pulled out and your eyes torn from their sockets."