"I suppose," she said, "you are alone as usual. Is it safe, after nightfall--you, who have so many enemies?"
"Marcos is at Torre Garda, where I left him three days ago. The snows are melting and the fishing is good. It is unusual to come at this hour, I know, but I came for a special purpose."
He glanced towards the door. The quiet of this house seemed to arouse a sense of suspicion and antagonism in his mind.
"I wished, of course, to see you also, though I am aware that the affections are out of place in this--holy atmosphere."
She winced almost imperceptibly and said nothing.
"I want to see Juanita de Mogente," said the Count. "It is unusual, I know, but in this place you are all-powerful. It is important, or I should not ask it."
"She is in bed. They go to bed at eight o"clock."
"I know. Is not that all the better? She has a room to herself, I recollect. You can arouse her and bring her to me and no one need know that she has had a visitor--except, I suppose, the peeping eyes that haunt a nunnery corridor."
He gave a shrug of the shoulder.
"Mother of G.o.d!" he exclaimed. "The air of secrecy infects one. I am not a secretive man. All the world knows my opinions. And here am I plotting like a friar. Can I see Juanita?"
And he laughed quietly as he looked at his sister.
"Yes, I suppose so."
He nodded his thanks.
"And, Dolores, listen!" he said. "Let me see her alone. It may save complications in the future. You understand?"
Sor Teresa turned in the doorway and looked at him.
He could not see the expression of her eyes, which were in deep shadow, and she left him wondering whether she had understood or not.
It would seem that Sor Teresa, despite her slow dignity of manner, was a quick person. For in a few moments the door of the waiting-room was again opened and a young girl hastened breathlessly in. She was not more than sixteen or seventeen, and as she came in she threw back her dark hair with one hand.
"I was asleep, Uncle Ramon," she exclaimed with a light laugh, "and the good Sister had to drag me out of bed before I would wake up. And then, of course, I thought it was a fire. We have always hoped for a fire, you know."
She was continuing to attend to her hasty dress as she spoke, tying the ribbon at the throat of her gay dressing-gown with careless fingers.
"I had not even time to pull up my stockings," she concluded, making good the omission with a friendly nonchalance. Then she turned to look at Sor Teresa, but her eyes found instead the closed door.
"Oh!" she cried, "the good Sister has forgotten to come back with me. And it is against the rules. What a joke! We are not allowed to see visitors alone--except father or mother, you know. I don"t care. It was not my fault."
And she looked doubtfully from the door to Sarrion and back again to the door. She was very young and gay and careless. Her cheeks still flushed by the deep sleep of childhood were of the colour of a peach that has ripened quickly in the glow of a southern sun. Her eyes were dark and very bright; the bird-like shallow vivacity of childhood still sparkled in them. It seemed that they were made for laughing, not for tears or thought. She was the incarnation of youth and springtime. To find such ignorance of the world, such innocence of heart, one must go to a nunnery or to Nature.
"I came to see you to-night," said Sarrion, "as I may be leaving Saragossa again to-morrow morning."
"And the good Sister allowed me to see you. I wonder why! She has been cross with me lately. I am always breaking things, you know."
She spread out her hands with a gesture of despair.
"Yesterday it was an altar-vase. I tripped over the foot of that stupid St. Andrew. Have you heard from papa?"
Sarrion hesitated for a moment at the sudden question.
"No," he answered at length.
"Oh! I wish he would come home from Cuba," said the girl, with a pa.s.sing gravity. "I wonder what he will be like. Will his hair be gray? Not that I dislike gray hair you know," she added hurriedly. "I hope he will be nice. One of the girls told me the other day that she disliked her father, which seems odd, doesn"t it? Milagros de Villanueva--do you know her? She was my friend once. We told each other everything. She has red hair. I thought it was golden when she was my friend. But one can see with half an eye that it is red."
Sarrion laughed rather shortly.
"Have you heard from your father?" he asked.
"I had a letter on Saint Mark"s Day," she answered. "I have not heard from him since. He said he hoped to give me a surprise, he trusted a pleasant one, during the summer. What did he mean? Do you know?"
"No," answered Sarrion, thoughtfully. "I know nothing."
"And Marcos is not with you?" the girl went on gaily. "He would not dare to come within the walls. He is afraid of all nuns. I know he is, though he denies it. Some day, in the holidays, I shall dress as a nun, and you will see. It will frighten him out of his wits."
"Yes," said Sarrion looking at her, "I expect it would. Tell me," he went on after a pause, "Do you know this stick?"
And he held out, under the rays of the lamp, the sword-stick he had picked up in the Calle San Gregorio.
She looked at it and then at him with startled eyes.
"Of course," she said. "It is the sword-stick I sent papa for the New Year. You ordered it yourself from Toledo. See, here is the crest. Where did you get it? Do not mystify me. Tell me quickly--is he here? Has he come home?"
In her eagerness she laid her hands on his dusty riding coat and looked up into his face.
"No, my child, no," answered Sarrion, stroking her hair, with a tenderness unusual enough to be remembered afterwards. "I think not. The stick must have been stolen from him and found its way back to Saragossa in the hand of the thief. I picked it up in the street yesterday. It is a coincidence, that is all. I will write to your father and tell him of it."
Sarrion turned away, so that the shade of the lamp threw his face into darkness. He was afraid of those quick, bright eyes--almost afraid that she should divine that he had already telegraphed to Cuba.
"I only came to ask you whether you had heard from your father and to hear that you were well. And now I must go."
She stood looking at him, thoughtfully pulling at the delicate embroidery of her sleeves, for all that she wore was of the best that Saragossa could provide, and she wore it carelessly, as if she had never known other, and paid little heed to wealth---as those do who have always had it.
"I think there is something you are not telling me," she said, with the ever-ready laugh twinkling beneath her dusky lashes. "Some mystery."
"No, no. Good-night, my child. Go back to your bed."
She paused with her hand on the door, looking back, her face all shaded by her tumbled hair hanging to her waist.
"Are you sure you have not heard from papa?"
"Quite sure--! I wish I had," he added when the door was closed behind her.