 Señor Administrador is
a deep politico.« But to Charles Gould, in his own room, the old Major would
remark with a grim and soldierly cheeriness, »We are all playing our heads at
this game.«
    Don José Avellanos would mutter »Imperium in imperio, Emilia, my soul,« with
an air of profound self-satisfaction which, somehow, in a curious way, seemed to
contain a queer admixture of bodily discomfort. But that, perhaps, could only be
visible to the initiated.
    And for the initiated it was a wonderful place, this drawing-room of the
Casa Gould, with its momentary glimpses of the master - El Señor Administrador -
older, harder, mysteriously silent, with the lines deepened on his English,
ruddy, out-of-doors complexion; flitting on his thin cavalryman's legs across
the doorways, either just back from the mountain or with jingling spurs and
riding-whip under his arm, on the point of starting for the mountain. Then Don
Pépé, modestly martial in his chair, the llanero who seemed somehow to have
found his martial jocularity, his knowledge of the world, and his manner perfect
for his station, in the midst of savage armed contests with his kind; Avellanos,
polished and familiar, the diplomatist with his loquacity covering much caution
and wisdom in delicate advice, with his manuscript of a historical work on
Costaguana, entitled »Fifty Years of Misrule,« which, at present, he thought it
was not prudent (even if it were possible) »to give to the world«; these three,
and also Doña Emilia amongst them, gracious, small, and fairy-like, before the
glittering tea-set, with one common master-thought in their heads, with one
common feeling of a tense situation, with one ever-present aim to preserve the
inviolable character of the mine at every cost. And there was also to be seen
Captain Mitchell, a little apart, near one of the long windows, with an air of
old-fashioned neat old bachelorhood about him, slightly pompous, in a white
waistcoat, a little disregarded and unconscious of it; utterly in the dark, and
imagining himself to be in the thick of things. The good man, having spent a
clear thirty years of his life on the high seas before getting what he called a
»shore billet,« was astonished at the importance of transactions (other than
relating to shipping) which take place on dry land. Almost every event out of
the usual daily course marked an epoch for him or else was history;
