“You hesitate.  But reflect well, my friend, before denying my request.  True, you are loath to renounce the great world with its excitements, ambitions, and pleasures.  But you would renounce them for a life free from care, an honorable position, and a career full of promise.  It will take years to complete the work I have begun, and make Quipai a nation.  As I said when you first came, Providence sent you here, as it sent Angela, for some good end.  It sent the one for the other.  Stay with us, Monsieur Nigel, and marry Angela!  If you search the world through you could find no sweeter wife.”

My hesitation vanished like the morning mist before the rising sun.

“If Angela will be my wife,” I said, “I will be your successor.”

“It is the answer I expected, Monsieur Nigel.  I am content to let Angela be the arbiter of your fate and the fate of Quipai.  She will be here presently.  Put the question yourself.  She knows nothing of this; but I have watched you both, and though my eyes are growing dim I am not blind.”

And with that the abbe left me to my thoughts.  It was not the first time that the idea of asking Angela to be my wife had entered my mind.  I loved her from the moment I first set eyes on her, and my love has become a passion.  But I had not been able to see my way.  How could I ask a beautiful, gently nurtured girl to share the lot of a penniless wanderer, even if she could consent to leave Quipai, which I greatly doubted.  But now!  Compared with Angela, the excitements and ambitions of which the abbe had spoken did not weigh as a feather in the balance.  Without her life would be a dreary penance; with her a much worse place than Quipai would be an earthly paradise.

But would she have me?  The abbe seemed to think so.  Nevertheless, I felt by no means sure about it.  True, she appeared to like my company.  But that might be because I had so much to tell her that was strange and new; and though I had observed her narrowly, I had detected none of that charming self-consciousness, that tender confusion, those stolen glances, whereby the conventional lover gauges his mistress’s feelings, and knows before he speaks that his love is returned.  Angela was always the same—­frank, open, and joyous, and, except that her caresses were reserved for him, made no difference between the abbe and me.

“A chirimoya for your thoughts, senor!” said a well-known voice, in musical Castilian.  “For these three minutes I have been standing close by you, with this freshly gathered chirimoya, and you took no notice of me.”

“A thousand pardons and a thousand thanks, senorita!” I answered, taking the proffered fruit.  “But my thoughts were worth all the chirimoyas in the world, delicious as they are, for they were of you.”

“We were thinking of each other then.”

“What!  Were you thinking of me?”

“Si, senor.”

“And what were you thinking, senorita?”