"They depend on my happiness, and that is gone."

"Coronado, you are playing riddles."

"This table-land reminds me of my own life. Do you see that it has no
verdure? I have been just as barren of all true happiness. There has been
no fruit or blossom of true affection for me to gather. You know that I
lost my excellent father and my sainted mother when I was a child. I was
too young to miss them; but for all that the bereavement was the same;
there was the less love for me. It seems as if there had been none."

"Garcia has been good to you--of late," suggested Clara, rather puzzled to
find consolation for a man whose misery was so new to her.

Remembering what a scoundrel Garcia was, and what a villainous business
Garcia had sent him upon, Coronado felt like smiling. He knew that the old
man had no sentiments beyond egotism, and a family pride which mainly, if
not entirely, sprang from it. Such a heart as Garcia's, what a place to
nestle in! Such a creature as Coronado seeking comfort in such a breast as
his uncle's was very much like a rattlesnake warming himself in a hole of
a rock.

"Ah, yes!" sighed Coronado. "Admirable old gentleman! I should not have
forgotten him. However, he is a solace which comes rather late. It is only
two years since he perceived that he had done me injustice, and received
me into favor. And his affection is somewhat cold. Garcia is an old man
laden with affairs. Moreover, men in general have little sympathy with
men. When we are saddened, we do not look to our own sex for cheer. We
look to yours."