I had not liked Don Eugenio Suarez, even with his generous gestures during my time in town.
I could not forget how he had let Pedro and his men sleep in a storehouse filled with drying copra. For all the displays of hospitality he extended toward me, he hadn't even bothered to have the copra cleared out—or at the very least, to provide them with simple mats and a few proper meals.
And, of course, it was not lost on me how coldly he treated his own family. Despite the circumstances, a proper human being would have shown at least a hint of sorrow over his father's death, and some measure of compassion for his grieving half-sister. Yet according to the housemaid, he had tried to evict her from the very house she had grown up in—just a few days before I arrived.
