Сердца трех / Hearts of Three

�All Gringos look alike to the Jefe,’ Francis nodded sympathetically. She was splendidly beautiful and wonderful, he thought. �He certainly runs all San Antonio, and short shrift is his motto. He’ll give Henry no more time than he gave us. We must get him out to-night.’

�Now listen,’ Leoncia began again. �We Solanos cannot permit this… this execution. Our pride… our honor. We cannot permit it. Speak! any of you. Father you. Suggest something…’

And while the discussion went on, Francis, for the time being silent, wrestled deep in the throes of sadness.

Leoncia’s fervor was magnificent, but it was for another man and it did not precisely exhilarate him. Strong upon him was the memory of the jail patio after he had been released and Henry had been arrested. He could still see, with the same stab at the heart, Leoncia in Henry’s arms, Henry seeking her hand to ascertain if his ring was on it, and the long kiss of the embrace that followed.

Ah, well, he sighed to himself, he had done his best.

After Henry had been led away, had he not told Leoncia, quite deliberately and coldly, that Henry was her man and lover, and the wisest of choices for the daughter of the Solanos?

But the memory of it did not make him a bit happy. Nor did the rightness of it. Eight it was. That he never questioned, and it strengthened him into hardening his heart against her. Yet the right, he found in his case, to be the sorriest of consolation.

And yet what else could he expect? It was his misfortune to have arrived too late in Central America, that was all, and to find this flower of woman already annexed by a previous comer a man as good as himself, and, his heart of fairness prompted, even better. And his heart of fairness compelled loyalty to Henry from him to Henry Morgan, of the breed and blood; to Henry Morgan, the wild-fire descendant of a wild-fire ancestor, in canvas pants, and floppy sombrero, with a prompting for the ears of strange young men, living on sea biscuit and turtle eggs and digging up the Bull and the Calf for old Sir Henry’s treasure.

And while Enrico Solano and his sons talked plans and projects on their broad piazza, to which Francis lent only half an ear, a house servant came, whispered in Leoncia’ s ear, and led her away around the ell of the piazza, where occurred a scene that would have excited Francis’ risibility and wrath.