"You will what?" she asked, wrinkling her brow at my slang.

"I’ll get hold of some clothes somehow, if I steal them;" and as soon as
breakfast was over, I went out to forage.

Juan was right in one respect.  What soldiers were in Calatayud were at
the inn, and sticking to my principle of the value of impudence, I went
up to the two officers who were in command of the party, bade them
good-day, and asked them if they spoke English.  One of them replied
that he did.

"Good," I said, heartily, and offered him my hand and asked him to give
me a cigarette.  "I can speak Spanish a bit, but our English tongues
don’t seem to fit the words somehow.  Let me introduce myself, for I
want a little advice.  I am Lord Glisfoyle, an Englishman, travelling
with my sister, and we have just heard of the death of a relative in
London, and have to get there quickly.  Which is the best way to go?  I
mean, considering the mess and excitement of all this Carlist business.
I was at Daroca, and wanted to get up to Saragossa by rail; but
yesterday you gentlemen had taken possession of the line, and I’ll be
hanged if I could get tickets.  So we rode over here and left our
baggage there.  Here is my card;" and, as if searching for one, I pulled
out a roll of English bank notes, which impressed them as much as I
desired.  "I haven’t one, I see; I must have left my card case when I
changed, I expect.  Anyhow, it doesn’t matter."

The officer was as obliging as courtesy demanded he should be to a rich
English nobleman in a difficulty, and very soon we three were discussing
my route over a bottle of the best wine which Angostino could find in
his cellar.

The Madrid route was suggested; but I said I had thought of the other,
and then my two companions worked out the train service in that
direction.  After that was settled we went out together and strolled
about the streets chatting and smoking; and in the course of an hour I
had acquired a good deal of useful information about the doings and
plans of the military; while on my side I took them to the telegraph
office and let them see the telegrams I sent off to London and to Mayhew
at the British Embassy in the name of Lord Glisfoyle.

That business completed, they went off to their military duties, and I
found shops where I could get some clean linen for myself and a costume
of a kind for Sarita, to whom, trading on Spanish ignorance of such
things, I ordered them to be sent in the name of Lady Mercy Glisfoyle.
Then I sauntered in the direction of old Tomaso’s house, and finding
Juan on the lookout for me, I told him to be at the station that
afternoon at four o’clock, to watch me but not to speak to me; and to
take a ticket for the station where we had to change into the train for
the north.

Having done this good morning’s work, I went back to the inn to have a
couple of hours’ sleep before leaving.  I paid liberally and tipped
royally, so that everyone about the place was sorry for my going.  The
two officers insisted upon accompanying us to the station to see me off;
an attention which would have been very pleasant, had I not feared that
he who spoke English might detect Sarita’s accent; but I put a bold face
on matters, and explained that my sister, Lady Mercy Glisfoyle, was very
much fatigued, and had so bad an attack of neuralgia that she had to
bandage her face and could not speak.  And such was the confidence in me
that even that simple ruse was not detected, and no suspicion was
roused.

At the station the officer was good enough to take our tickets for us,
and he thus saved me all troublesome questions.  In fact every
difficulty seemed to vanish as we faced it; and Sarita was actually in
the train, and I was standing chatting with my two new friends, when the
luck veered, and the crash came all suddenly. Nor was it any the sweeter
to me because I had brought it on myself by a single piece of
over-acting.

The telegram to Mayhew at the Embassy proved my undoing.  It was
tampered with or censored or something at Madrid.  At any rate it came
under the attention of the police there; and the name having been
bracketed with that of Carbonnell, when the attempt had been made to
arrest me at the Hotel de l’Opera, somebody’s suspicions were roused,
and instructions were sent to stop me.  I was laughing with the officers
and just going to bid them good-bye, when someone approached me.

"Lord Glisfoyle, I think."

"Yes, what do you want with me?"

"I am sorry, but there may be a mistake of some kind.  I have
instructions to ask you not to leave Calatayud for the present."

"From whom are your instructions?" I asked quickly, in very fluent
Spanish, forgetting all about my English accent in my chagrin and
surprise.

"They come from Madrid; and they speak of a certain Ferdinand Carbonnell
in connection with you."

"I am an English nobleman, and at a loss to understand you.  Do you mean
you intend to stop my going away.  You’ll do so at your own risk; and
unless you use force I shall certainly go."

"I trust you will not compel us to use force.  I have no alternative but
to obey my instructions."

At that moment I noticed the expression of the two officers and realised
my blunder in showing my knowledge of Spanish.  I was to pay a heavy
price for it, too.

"I repeat I am an English nobleman travelling with my sister, and the
English Government will not put up quietly with any interference of this
kind.  I am called by urgent business of a private character to London,
and any delay will be serious.  These gentlemen know that I have
telegraphed to London announcing my immediate return."

"Your Spanish is far purer than I understood, senor," replied the
English-speaking officer, drily.  "I think you can explain matters
sufficiently to dispense with any reference to me."

"As you please," I answered, loftily; and turning to the official, I
said curtly, "I will do as you wish, and will just explain matters to my
sister."  I could think of no better excuse to get a word with Sarita.
Speak to her I must—to urge her to continue the journey, and to give her
money as I feared she had none.  I turned to the carriage door and said
coolly, in English: "I’m stopped, but you can go on; and must take this
money. Wire to Mrs. Curwen when you reach Bayonne, and remain there.
Please," I urged, backing the appeal with a glance.  To my delighted
surprise she consented, and with a light nod, I added: "I shall be on by
the next train," and turned to the official, "I am at your disposal,
senor."

But in the meantime the two officers had communicated their suspicions
to the man, and he now said:

"I must ask the senorita, your sister, to alight and remain also.  She
shall be treated with every consideration."

"This is monstrous," I exclaimed indignantly; but my protests were
unavailing, and we had to suffer the infinite chagrin and disappointment
of seeing the train steam away without us.  I masked my feelings under
an assumption of indignation, however, and asked where we were to go.

"You can return to Angostino’s, senor," said the official, very
politely, "but you must permit that I remain in your company until I
have further instructions."

"All places are alike to me after this scandalous outrage," I answered.
Then, looking about me, I saw Juan watching us at a safe distance, and
as we passed I gave him a meaning glance, and said aloud to Sarita, "We
are arrested, you see," and he answered with a look to show that he
understood and would do my bidding.

"I wish to telegraph to the British Embassy," I then said to the
official.

"I regret, senor, but I can allow nothing to be done until I have
further instructions," and there was nothing for me but to comply.

We went back to the inn to wait; but the delay was not long, for in
reply to the telegram announcing the arrest there came a message for us
both to be taken to Madrid.

"You will give me your word to make no attempt to resist us, senor?"

"Certainly I will not.  I won’t recognise your action in any way, and
you can take the consequences of everything you do," was my hot reply.
But it served no other purpose than to cause the man to have two
subordinates with him in the carriage, thus preventing all attempt at
conversation between Sarita and myself, other than a few words of
English.

Sarita played her part well enough, showing a stolid, stoical
indifference to everything, and maintaining the pretence of
indisposition.  But it was all of no avail. I had one consolation.  Juan
was in the train, and I knew that very soon Mayhew would be acting to
effect my release; and I occupied the time and tedium of the journey by
thinking out the far more serious problem of Sarita’s arrest.

At Madrid the truth came out, of course, as I knew it would.  Rubio was
on the platform waiting for us when the train drew up.  Recognising us
both immediately, he rubbed his hands with pleasure over the importance
of the arrest.  He disregarded my angry protests, and in a few words
sent my spirits down to zero.

"You are Ferdinand Carbonnell; I know that, and that would be enough,
but there is more.  This is Senorita Castelar, a most prominent Carlist,
and you were stopped in the act of helping her to escape from the
country under the pretence that she was your sister. For that even Lord
Glisfoyle would have to answer. You are not in England, senor."

"No; but you’ll find the English Government will have a word to say."

"That is for his Excellency the Minister to settle, and for the present
you are both prisoners;" and without more ado he put Sarita into one
carriage and me into another, with a sufficient guard to ensure our
safety.  Thus, instead of being well on the road to Bayonne as I had
hoped, I found myself locked up in a filthy prison cell in Madrid, with
a bitter load of misgivings and fears, and a host of useless
lamentations and revilings for the shortsightedness and blunders which I
had committed at the moment when Sarita’s freedom lay in the hollow of
my hand.  I could have dashed my head against the wall in the bitterness
of my self-reproach and futile regrets.

They would not let me communicate with a soul outside. I asked to send a
letter to the British Embassy, and they answered that I was a Spaniard
and a Carlist, and would be treated accordingly.  I demanded an
interview with Quesada, and they replied with the flout that I could see
him when he made an appointment.  I went so far even as to request that
a message be sent to the Palace, and they laughed at me for a madman,
and jeered and sneered the louder in proportion as I stormed and fumed
and raged.  Seeing that, I made up my mind to be sensible, and do the
only thing I could do—wait.

Nor did I wait in vain.

The luck which had gone so well with me to a point, only to change at
Calatayud with such ruinous consequences, veered round again the moment
I reached Madrid, where there had been a witness of my arrest who was
soon to bring me help.

I had been about three hours in the cell, and was passing the weary,
baffling, irritating time in speculating how long I was to be left like
a forgotten dog in the dirty kennel of a cell, and how long it would
take Mayhew to get to work to find me and procure my release, when the
door of the cell was unlocked and a warder told me to follow him.

"Where to?" I asked.

"There’s a visitor for you."

"Bring him here, then," I answered, determined that anyone from the
Embassy should see the filthy place in which I had been caged.

"Come with me," he said again.

"I will not," I answered, and curled myself up on the bare bench.  At
this he growled out an oath, and after a moment banged the door and
locked it again. It was probably a novel experience for him to find any
prisoner unwilling to get out of such a kennel at the first opportunity,
and, in truth, when some minutes elapsed and he did not return, I was
disposed to regret my own obstinacy.

But I heard his returning steps later on, the door was once more opened,
and the brute said, in a tone of deference:

"The prisoner is here, senorita," and I jumped to my feet in intense
surprise to find Dolores Quesada, holding up her skirts, and looking in
dismay at the disgusting condition of the cell, and then with distress,
sympathy, and concern at me.

                             *CHAPTER XXIX*

                            *QUESADA AGAIN*

"I must apologise for your brother’s taste, senorita, in compelling me
to allow you to find me in such a—palace," I said, with a wave of the
hand about the filthy cell.  "This is the hospitality he considers is my
due."

The disgusting stench of the place turned her sick and faint, and anger
flashed from her eyes.  I was not at all sorry for her to see for
herself the hole in which I had been caged.

"You must leave it at once, senor.  It is horrible," she cried.

"I am but one of hundreds honoured with the same treatment, and the
courtesy of my host is so pressing as to render it difficult for me to
leave."

"I have brought the order for your release, senor. It is
abominable—abominable!  I wish to speak to Senor Carbonnell; take us to
some place where we can breathe," she said to the warder.

"I told the prisoner to come before, but he refused, senorita," said the
man in a surly tone; and then we followed him along the corridor to a
square, bare room near the entrance to the gaol.

"I am ashamed at what you have suffered, Senor Carbonnell.  My brother
has deceived me, and broken his pledged word."

"I shall ever remember your former efforts for me, senorita, but you
will see that the subject of Senor Quesada’s conduct is one I can
scarcely discuss with his sister," I answered.

"But it is just that which I want to discuss.  I have obtained your
release——"

"Pardon me," I broke in, "but I cannot accept my release on any
conditions whatever.  I am profoundly indebted to you for this act of
yours, deeply impressed by the motives which underlie it, and can never
cease to think kindly of you for it; but, though you found me a prisoner
in such vile surroundings, I am not without great influence even here in
Madrid—far greater than your brother deems—and my liberation was at most
but a matter of hours.  I can therefore make no conditions even with one
so gracious and so friendly as yourself."

"You have maddened Sebastian against you by threatening him, but you
will not think of such things."

"I would do much to please you, I am sure you know that; but you ask me
what is impossible," I answered, firmly.

"There is no man in the world for whom I would have done this," she
cried, impetuously.  "And I had to strain to the utmost my influence
with Sebastian to do it.  The very fact that he ordered your arrest in
defiance of his pledge to me shows how bitterly he feels. I was at the
station this evening by the merest chance when you were brought there,
and I could scarcely believe my own eyes when I saw you were under
arrest. I went at once to Sebastian——"

"Pray forgive me if I interrupt you, but I cannot discuss his conduct
with you.  If you saw the arrest, however, you will have seen that I was
not alone in being arrested; and if you wish to do me a kindness you
will use this great influence of yours to secure the liberation of
Senorita Castelar."

But at the mention of Sarita she drew herself up, and both anger and
surprise, but chiefly anger, were in the look she gave me.

"You ask me that?" she cried, and then as suddenly changed.  "You do not
think she is in any danger, surely?" she added.

"I know that she was arrested, and you yourself saw the place where I
was imprisoned, and can judge of the fitness of such a hole for a girl."

"And you don’t know?  She has never told you?" she cried, scornfully.

"I am not sure I understand you," I replied.

"She is to be my brother’s wife, senor.  Do you think he would suffer
her to be treated as—as you have been?"

"Senorita, there is a great misunderstanding somewhere; but if anything
is certain, it is that she will never be his wife."

"Will you come and see Sebastian?" she asked, suddenly.  "I am so
anxious to have peace between you."

"It could do no good."

"I ask you to come.  If you value what I have done here, you will
consent."

"It can do no good; but if you ask it I will go;" and the instant I had
consented she led the way to her carriage, which was waiting outside the
gate.

"Where is Senorita Castelar?" I asked, as we drove rapidly along.

"I don’t know, but she is sure to be well cared for," she answered, as
though the subject was no concern of hers; and no more was said until we
were close to the house.  Then, with some hesitation, she said: "I know
nearly everything of my brother’s plans, and shall be present at the
interview.  There must be a full understanding."

I made no reply, for I did not quite know what she meant; but I was
certain that if there was to be anything like a full understanding the
interview promised to be interesting; and I began to feel glad I had
come.

Quesada was at home, and in the room where I had had my last
conversation with him and my introduction to Rubio, and I found him
looking much more concerned and anxious than I had ever seen him.

"What is the meaning of this visit?" was his blunt greeting.

"I have brought Senor Carbonnell," said Dolores, "that these things may
be explained and talked over. I wished it, Sebastian."

"Very well; what does he want to explain?"

"You told me to-night, for the second time, that he could and would ruin
you if he was set at liberty.  I wish to have peace between you.  I told
you so, when I insisted on his being liberated; and I have told him so,
too.  Now that you are face to face, say plainly what this means, and
how it is to be avoided."

"When women interfere in matters they don’t understand, they always do
something foolish.  This is mere foolishness.  Senor Carbonnell—or, to
give him his proper title, Lord Glisfoyle—is bent upon doing his utmost
to ruin me, and you have given him the opportunity.  Why, then, seek to
delay him in his purpose? Let him go and begin his task."  He spoke
quite firmly, and with great deliberateness.

"This is hopeless, Sebastian," cried his sister, wringing her hands.

"What would you have me do, Dolores?  Assume a fear of him which I do
not feel?  Throw myself at his feet and beg his mercy, when I stand in
no need of it? Play at theatricals?  You are a woman, we are men; and
you don’t understand us or our methods.  Lord Glisfoyle and I have been
engaged in a duel to the death.  I had him at my advantage when you
interfered—for the second time.  You have given him the advantage now,
and the cue is with him.  He holds, or thinks he holds, weapons which he
can use to secure my ruin; and you seem to think you can induce him not
to use them by bringing him here to talk over, as you call it, the
position.  I am sure he did not come willingly, and am surprised he came
at all; but here or anywhere else—except, of course, in safe keeping—it
is all one to me.  We shall continue the duel under the circumstances
which you have changed in this way to my disadvantage."

"I was leaving Spain when your men stopped me and brought me to Madrid,"
I said.

"But not alone," he rapped out, sharply.

"No, with the lady who is to be my wife," I retorted.

For a second his hands clenched involuntarily, and he winced, but
instantly recovered himself, and spoke calmly.

"That remains to be seen.  But why this interview?"

"I have not sought it," I answered curtly, and got up to leave.

"You must not go," cried Dolores.

"My dear Dolores, do not meddle any more."

"Yes, Sebastian, I will.  I must speak.  Senor Carbonnell—Lord
Glisfoyle, I mean—knows your secret plotting in regard to the King; he
holds, as you told me, documents which must compromise you, and may ruin
you if he can prove they are genuine.  These are what you call his
weapons.  There must be some inducement that can prevail upon him not to
use them. Is that not so, Lord Glisfoyle?" she cried, turning to me in
deep distress.

"You are forgetting yourself, Dolores.  We are not children or women,"
said the Minister, sternly.  "I will have no more of this child’s play.
You should not have brought Lord Glisfoyle here.  Every word you utter
but makes your blunder worse; and God knows you have done enough
mischief already to satisfy even a woman."

"I asked you a question, Lord Glisfoyle," said Dolores, paying no regard
to his protests.

"A question I find most difficult, I may say impossible, to answer.
Your brother knows how he has treated me, and knows also how he would
act were our positions reversed.  I can say no more."

"But do you mean to use these letters?" she persisted.

"Since obtaining them I have obtained others, and much information.  I
know the part you have played throughout this business, Senor
Quesada,"—I felt it easier to speak to him—"and I shall not rest until I
have done my utmost to bring this home to you.  In one thing you have
wronged your sister.  I should not have remained in what you term safe
keeping more than a few hours at the utmost; for already there are
forces at work for my liberation which even you would find it hopeless
to resist.  What you term your sister’s blunder, therefore—procuring my
liberation from the prison—is no more than an anticipation by those few
hours of what must have followed."

"That may be.  At any rate, you are free, and you owe it to her."  This
reminder of my obligation to Dolores was the first slight rift in his
firmness.

"If it were possible, it would influence my attitude. But nothing can do
that—nothing, at least, that you can do."

"I knew there was something.  What is it?  Tell us that, Lord Glisfoyle.
I beg and pray of you, say what it is," cried Dolores, in a tone of
fervent entreaty.

"It is useless even to name it.  It is nothing less than the undoing of
all this wilful and unholy persecution of the Carlists—wilful and unholy
because undertaken for the sake of furthering, not the welfare of Spain,
but your brother’s ambition."

"It is not impossible.  I am sure it is not," she exclaimed.  "You can
do anything, Sebastian; while your influence is what it is, you can do
anything.  Say that this shall be done, and Lord Glisfoyle will leave
Spain—I know he will—and give up these documents you fear so much."

They were the mere wild, idle words of a distracted woman, the cry of a
true heart torn asunder by the vehemence of emotion.

To my surprise, her brother did not instantly repudiate them, however,
but sat with pent, frowning brows in deep thought for a moment.

"Would you go alone?" he asked then, without relaxing the stern, set
expression of face.

"Do you mean would anything ever make me consent to see Sarita Castelar
your wife?"

"Would you go alone?" he repeated, in the same tone.

"Nothing would make me consent to that," I replied, answering my own
question.  "And nothing will ever induce me not to hold you responsible
for her safety."

He heard me without a sign, and again buried himself in his thoughts.
Then he pushed his chair back, rose, and went to the door.

"Leave us a few minutes, Dolores," he said, still in the same set, even
tone.  "It is possible that we may yet arrive at an understanding."

She looked at him in fear, then at me, doubtingly, and again back at
him.

"No, I cannot leave you.  I—I dare not."

"Leave us, Dolores.  I shall not murder Lord Glisfoyle."

She still hesitated and lingered, but at length yielded, saying as she
passed me—

"I shall see you again?"

I bowed, but said nothing; I was too full of surprise at the turn things
were taking, and too thoughtful, wondering what was to come next.

Quesada held the door while his sister passed out, and closed and locked
it after her, and turned back to his table.

"We are now quite alone, Lord Glisfoyle, and can speak plainly.  You
love Sarita Castelar, and hope to make her your wife?"

"I decline to discuss her with you, Senor Quesada."

"Well, then, I tell you she is pledged to marry me, and I will suffer no
man on earth to take her from me."

"You did not speak so to your tool, Colonel Juan Livenza.  I am aware of
the infamous bargain you made with him."

"I will not allow anyone to take her from me," he said again, between
his teeth, the increased tenseness of the tone being his only notice of
my words.  "You are an English nobleman, and presumably a man of
courage.  When you were here last time in my house, you struck me.  You
are now bent on ruining me, and have set everything on that venture.
Owing to my sister’s interference, you are free; and because she loves
you, she is mad enough to stay my hands in dealing with you, knowing,
what you also know, things that must be kept secret.  And as a crowning
stroke you threaten to rob me of the woman I love.  Under those
circumstances, what think you is the fitting course for two men—two
enemies, if you will—placed as you and I are, to pursue?"

"If I understand you, I decline to discuss such a proposal."

"If you are a gentleman and a man of honour, and not a coward, you will
find only one answer to my question," he said, his rage deepening in its
quiet intensity with every sentence, till each word he uttered was a
deliberate insult—an added knot on the lash of his bitter tongue.  But I
had my temper too well in hand to take fire.

"There are matters you forget.  You set your bully, Livenza, upon me
first; you used your power as Minister to destroy me; you ordered your
police spies to dog me; and you had me gaoled in one of your filthy
prisons.  In this way you exhausted every means in your power to deal
with me officially; and having schemed and tricked and bullied thus in
vain, you find yourself at bay, and as a last resource you remember your
honour with suspicious tardiness, and think of the means which the
gentleman and the man of honour you speak of would have thought of
first.  I will not fight with you, Senor Quesada."

"You are a coward, then."

"I don’t accept your standards in that matter."

"I will make you fight me," he cried; and, his rage breaking beyond all
control, he rushed at me, and raised his arm to strike me with the back
of the hand across the mouth; but I caught his arm, and thrust him
staggering back against his chair, over which he nearly fell. Thinking
he might have firearms, and that in his mad fury he would use them, I
unlocked the door, and was leaving the room when he called to me; but I
paid no heed, and went out.

Dolores was in waiting, and came when she heard me leaving.  She was
paler even than before, like one distraught with fear and anxiety.  I
pitied her from the bottom of my heart, and her brother’s blunt
statement that she loved me, and had been led by that love to insist on
my freedom even at the cost of ruin to him, touched me very closely.

"Is there any hope of an arrangement, senor?" she asked, searching my
face with haggard eyes.

"None whatever," I replied, shaking my head.

"Can nothing bring you two together again?"

"It is absolutely impossible, senorita."

I spoke as gently as I could, but it was useless to flinch from the
truth.

"Can I do nothing to prevail with you?  I have tried so hard to serve
you," she said, in a tone of despairing wistfulness.

"For you, personally, I would do anything in my power.  I am not
unmindful of what it must have cost you, and you shall not find me
ungrateful."

"I do not ask for thanks; I do not want them.  I should have done the
same had the ruin been mine instead of Sebastian’s," and she smiled.  "I
am glad to have done it;" but the smile ended in a sigh at the thought
of the price to be paid.

I took her hands and pressed them.

"I am very troubled for you," I murmured.

She returned the pressure, her own hands trembling very much.

"If it had not been for Sarita Castelar, you two would never have
quarrelled, and—and all would have been so different."  Her lips
quivered as she spoke, and her eyes were full of sadness.  Her look
pained me inexpressibly.  I said nothing, and after a pause she added:

"You do not think he will let you take her from him? You know him too
well for that; although you do not know him yet.  What was it he would
not let me hear?"

"I would rather you heard it from him.  And I must go."  She had roused
my fears for Sarita.

"I thought he meditated some act of violence against you, and he is
headstrong enough to do anything—even against her."

"You can surely prevent that," I cried, quickly, in alarm.  "You were
strong to save me."

The look with which she answered me lives in my memory to this hour.
Then she drew her hands from mine, and said coldly—

"I can do nothing.  You have made him desperate."  And with a change of
tone, after a slight pause, as though excusing her own hardness of
thought and resolve, she added: "Besides, I do not know where she is; so
I _can_ do nothing, even if I would."

With that I left her, and hurried from the house a prey to innumerable
harassing fears, the stings and darts of which sent me plunging headlong
through the streets to go I did not think where, and to do I did not
know what.

Sarita was in imminent peril from that reckless, desperate man, and I
alone had to save her.  More than once I halted undecided whether to
return and take up the challenge he had thrown down, and trust to my own
strength and skill to render him powerless to harm her. And in this
bewildered state of mind I found myself at the door of my old dwelling,
half crazed by the thought that hours at least must elapse before I
could use hand or tongue for her protection, and that for all those
hours she would be absolutely at his mercy.

                             *CHAPTER XXX*

                               *SUSPENSE*

The moment I entered my rooms I perceived that they had been ransacked.
The trail of the police searchers lay over everything.  In his eagerness
to regain possession of that compromising document which he feared so
acutely, Quesada had turned his agents loose in my rooms; and they had
done their work so thoroughly that the condition of the place was a
silent but most impressive tribute to their skill and his alarm.  The
rooms had been searched from wall to wall; my trunks had been broken and
overhauled; drawers and cupboards had been forced, and the contents
diligently scrutinised; not a thing had been left in its proper place;
and I smiled with a feeling of grim pleasure that I had had the
forethought to put the papers in the safe hands of my friend Mayhew.

For the action of the police I cared nothing, and I stayed in the place
only long enough to get such clothes as I might need; and I threw them
into a Gladstone bag, and carried them over to Mayhew’s rooms.

I had too stern a task before me in procuring Sarita’s release to give
serious thought to much else.  My friend was out, and I guessed I should
find him at the Hotel de l’Opera; but, having changed my clothes, I sat
down to think over matters before going in search of him.

Affairs were in all truth in an inextricable tangle, and very little
reflection convinced me that instead of unravelling them I had made them
worse by the course I had adopted with Sebastian Quesada.  I had
committed the fatal blunder of driving him into a corner, and rendering
him desperate enough to resort to any of those violent methods which
Dolores had said he would certainly adopt when once his back was to the
wall.

It was easy to see now what I ought to have done. Belated wisdom is the
curse of a fool, I thought bitterly, as I realised what my clumsy
shortsighted tactlessness had achieved.  What I ought to have done was
to have convinced him of my power to ruin him; have told him even of my
influence at the Palace; and have driven in upon him with irresistible
force that it was in my power to thwart the ambition and ruin the career
that were as the very breath of his nostrils to him.  Having done that,
I ought to have opened the door of escape by a pledge to do nothing if
he would but give up Sarita.

Instead of this I had driven him to desperation.  I had left him under
the conviction that not only could I ruin him, but that I most assuredly
should do so; and had thus given him no alternative but to set his
vigorous energies to work to retrieve so much of his position as was
possible, and to keep for himself what he prized scarcely less than his
position, and what it was already in his power to secure—the woman he
loved.

That he could keep Sarita from me, I could not doubt.  He needed but to
lift a finger to have her conveyed where I might search for her in vain;
and a slight knowledge of his resourceful and implacable character was
enough to convince anyone that he would act both promptly and
resolutely.  And I shuddered at the thought of the probable consequences
to her.

There was yet another distracting reflection.  It was by no means
certain that, even if I could wrest her from his grip, I could obtain
clemency for Sarita herself. Her actions in this infernal Carlist
business had been those of vigorous, bitter, and dangerous intrigue
against the King; treason as subtle as it was active.  She was an
acknowledged leader of the Carlists; and I might be sure that Quesada
for his own purposes had accumulated more than sufficient proofs of her
intrigues. Great as was the obligation of the King and the Queen Regent
to me, I could scarcely dare to hope they would pardon her; and hence,
if I succeeded in pulling down the strong pillars at the house of
Quesada’s reputation, there was too much reason to fear that when the
building fell Sarita would be crushed in the ruins.

Moreover, there was the problem of Sarita’s own sentiments.  In the
revulsion of feeling which had followed Livenza’s disclosures, she had
been willing to leave the country; and while I was with her, and the
influence of our mutual love could work upon her, that willingness might
have remained.  But in the solitude of her imprisonment, wherever the
prison might be, she would have long hours of cold thought; and I had
seen too much of her infatuated belief that her duty demanded she should
stay and share the fate of those who had been misled by her ill-fated
plans, not to fear that that infatuation would again assert itself.

Thus, ponder and stew and plan as I would, I could see no clear course.
All things contributed to make it a personal struggle between Quesada
and myself, in which, while I held the weapons that might ruin him, he
had the means of making that ruin fatal to me so far as the only object
I cared for, Sarita’s safety and well-being, was concerned.

As my head cleared from the whirl of mazing thoughts, the conclusion
that I had blundered so badly in my interview with him became plainer
and plainer, gradually hardening into the new purpose to return to him
in the possible hope of retrieving the mistake. Such a reopening of
matters would look like an admission of weakness; and so in truth it
was; but I had only one object—Sarita’s safety; and that must override
all other and lesser considerations.

Going down into the street, I drove back to his house, my distaste for
the interview increasing with every yard that brought it nearer, and the
difficulties of the task looming ever greater, until I am not sure that
I was not rather glad when I was told he had left his house, and that
the hour of his return was uncertain. I did not ask for Dolores, but,
getting back into the carriage that had brought me, told the man to
drive me to the Hotel de l’Opera.

My arrival there was hailed with delight.  Madame Chansette and Mayhew
were with Mrs. Curwen and Mercy, and, having heard of my arrest, all
were deep in anxious discussion of my affairs when I entered.

I gave them a very general and brief account of my doings, and instantly
a whole battery of questions was opened upon me.

"You look sadly in need of a good square meal," said Mrs. Curwen, always
practical; and she promptly ordered some supper for me.  "At the present
rate of running, about another week of this will finish you," she added.

"But how did you get away?" asked Mayhew. "You were arrested, and the
whole Embassy has been hard at work expostulating, protesting,
protocolling, and Heaven knows what.  There never was such a pother
raised in Madrid before."

"An order came for my release, and I walked out."

"Do you mean you were actually in prison?" asked Mercy.

"And a very filthy prison, too, I assure you.  But, so far as I am
concerned, that danger is over."

"Well, thank Heaven for that.  Another period of suspense of the kind
would about kill Mercy, and finish off the family," cried Mrs. Curwen.
"I’m off Spanish investments altogether.  And what’s going to happen
next?  Of course it’ll be something unusual.  There’s no musty
conventionality about your doings just now."

"And where is Sarita?" asked Madame Chansette.

"I wish I knew, my dear madame.  She was arrested at the same time as I;
and if I knew, I could do something to help her.  But that’s just the
pith and kernel of my trouble.  As to what will come next I have not a
much clearer idea than you, Mrs. Curwen.  But something will probably
happen to-morrow."

"We may be sure of that," she returned quickly. "And when can we all go
away to some safe un-dynamity country?"

"I think I shall be able to answer that better to-morrow."

"It’s all to-morrow, it seems to me.  And in the meantime don’t you
think you’d better go to bed somewhere?  You’re about fagged out."

"I am too anxious to sleep."

"And when was anxiety relieved by sitting up all night and worrying with
it?  There, I’ve rung the bell, and you can tell the waiter to have a
room got ready instantly for you.  We shall all feel easier if we know
you’re in the place.  I’m sure you can’t do anything to-night, and by
the morning you’ll have a clear head, some more plans, and enough energy
for another burst of this kind of thing."

When the waiter came I yielded, under protest, and ordered a room.

"I must have a long chat with Mayhew first," I said.

"Not to-night, if Mercy and I have any influence with Mr. Mayhew," she
returned, and Mercy agreed. Then, to my surprise, Mayhew, in a
half-shamefaced but very serious manner, said: "I think Mrs. Curwen is
right, Ferdinand."

"What, you as well, Silas?" and as I looked at him he smiled and
shrugged his shoulders.

"No one thinks of questioning Mrs. Curwen’s commands," he answered.

"Oh, already?  Then I’d better give in, too," and with that I went,
feeling indeed the truth of what she said—that I could do nothing that
night.

She was right, also, that I was in sore need of rest, and, despite my
anxieties and my declaration that sleep would be impossible, my head was
no sooner on the pillow than I fell into deep slumber, which lasted
until a sluggard’s hour on the following morning.  It was ten o’clock
before I awoke.

I found Mrs. Curwen alone, and my vexation at having been allowed to lie
so late must have shown in my face, for she said directly: "There’s no
one to blame but me, Lord Glisfoyle.  I would not allow you to be
called.  I don’t believe in my prescriptions being half taken."

"I have a great deal to do," I answered, somewhat ungraciously.

"That’s no reason why you should try to do it with half your energies
sapped for want of sleep.  Mr. Mayhew has been here for you and tried to
get to you; but I wouldn’t let him," she said assertively.

"He is learning obedience diligently, it seems," I observed.

"He is a very good fellow, and I strained my influence with him, I can
tell you," she retorted, with a smile of some occult meaning.

"He is the prince of good fellows, and the staunchest of friends, and I
congratulate you on having such influence to strain."

"Oh, men are not difficult to manage, if properly handled."

"Some of us, that is; but I hope he has been duly attentive in my
absence," I said, casually, and with a glance.

"What was the poor man to do?  He couldn’t very well leave us in the
lurch, I suppose?  You were away, and we’d positively no one else."

"To say nothing of his own inclinations," I added.

"To say nothing of his own inclinations," she repeated.  "Mercy is not
exactly the kind of girl to scare a man away from her, I should hope."

"A supposition that might be extended to include——"

"What do you mean?" she asked quickly, as I stopped.

"Whom should I mean but"—looking at her pointedly—"Madame Chansette,
shall I say?"  She laughed.

"Yes, we’ll say Madame Chansette."

"And yet—well, it doesn’t much matter whom we say; but at any rate he’s
a thoroughly genuine fellow, and—you can fill in the rest.  But, by the
way, where is Mercy?"

"She is having a French or Spanish lesson, I think; I’ll tell you all
about it when you’ve finished your breakfast, and not a minute before.
But about Mr. Mayhew, tell me, what is he at the Embassy here?  He seems
to speak as though he was a kind of mill-horse.  Are there no prospects
for him?  Has he no influence to push him on?"

"Yes, he has one, I think I may say two friends now who will see to
that.  I’m one of the two—and I think I’m speaking to the other," I
said, quietly.  "And between us we ought to do something.  But he’s as
proud as Lucifer, and a mere hint that we were at the back of anything
of the kind would make him kick."

"If poor A.B.C. were alive——"

"Then, my dear Mrs. Curwen, you would never have been in Madrid, and
would never have known Mayhew."  She shrugged her shapely shoulders,
smiled, and then said with unusual earnestness: "And will you really let
me help you in trying to get him a step or two up the ladder?"

"I mean to have him in London, and to make the people at home understand
that he has a head on his shoulders fit for better things.  Why, if
Silas only had money to back his brains, there’s nothing he might not do
or be.  But there, I’ve finished my breakfast!" I exclaimed, getting up
from the table, thinking I had said enough.  "And now, where is Mercy?"

"Will you shake hands on that bargain, Lord Glisfoyle?" she asked, her
eyes bright with the thoughts I knew I had started.  We shook hands
gravely, as became such a compact, and I looked straight into her eyes,
as I said in as earnest a tone as hers: "The woman who marries Silas
Mayhew will have a husband in a hundred thousand, true, honest-hearted,
straight and good right through.  And now, where _is_ Mercy?"  She
returned my look, coloured slightly, and some reply sprang to her lips,
but she checked it, and turning away, said: "Sebastian Quesada’s sister
came here, and the two girls are closeted together, waiting for you."

"And you have kept me here all this time!" I cried.

"I was bound to see to your health."

"You are as anxious for my health, I believe, as I am for your
happiness," and with that I hurried away, leaving her blushing very
prettily.

I found Dolores looking very white and worn, and in a mood of deep
dejection.  She and Mercy had been weeping together in the sympathetic
exchange of such confidence and consolation as their ignorance of each
other’s tongue and mutual indifferent knowledge of the French language
would allow.

"She is in terrible trouble, Ferdinand, do try and relieve her.  Her
heart is almost broken by the fearful strain of her sorrow," said Mercy,
getting up to leave as I entered.

"You do not understand things, Mercy, but I will do what I can."

"Your sister is an angel, Lord Glisfoyle," said Dolores, as the door
closed behind Mercy.  "I am almost ashamed to come to you, but I could
not keep away.  She has told me what I knew, of course, how good and
generous and noble you are.  Cannot you do what I asked you yesterday?
I heard of your second visit to us last night, and all through the
night—such a night of agony for me—I have been feeding my soul with the
hope that you came to make some agreement."

"Where is your brother?  I am truly pained to see you like this."

"It does not matter about me; nothing of that kind can matter now," she
answered in a tone deadened by sorrow.  "I should not come to you for
such a paltry object as my own troubles.  It is for Sebastian I am
thinking.  But you don’t seem to understand how I feel, how this fearful
thing has shut upon me like the closing walls of an Inquisition prison
cell, until whichever way I stretch out my hands I find ruin crushing in
upon me," and she moved her hands like one distraught with terror and
trouble.

"What can I do?" I asked, gently.

"Can’t you try and see what all this has meant to me?" she asked wildly,
ignoring my question.  "What I suffered when I knew that Sebastian meant
to ruin you, to involve you in this terrible Carlist business, to have
you proclaimed as Ferdinand Carbonnell, the desperate Carlist leader,
imprisoned and sent Heaven alone knew where, to suffer the fate and the
punishment which such a man would rightly suffer?  What could I do but
step in to save you?  You know his reluctance, the struggle we had, the
wild words he spoke of your ruining him, and then how he broke his
pledged word to me?  And yet to save you meant to ruin him!  Holy Mother
of God, what was I to do?" and she wrung her hands.  "I could not see
you wronged in this way; and yet as my reward am I to see him dragged
down, his reputation destroyed, his position degraded, his very name a
foulness in the mouths of the populace?  Is this your English sense of
honour and recompense?  No, no, I don’t mean that.  I know you are just
and honourable.  I am crazed with my trouble to speak such words to
you."

"Where is your brother?"

"I do not know.  You drove him to desperation last night.  He left this
house almost directly you had gone; and returned late, and was gone
again this morning before I could get word with him.  He is like a
mad-man; and what he will do in his madness, who can tell?"  The fears
that lay beneath her wild words were the same as had been pressing so
keenly on me, yet what to do to avert them was more than I could see.

"If you do not know where he is, what can we do?" I asked.

"Give me those compromising papers, and let me find him and prove that
the danger he fears is at an end?  He will then do anything you ask.
You do not know him.  He is stern, hard, implacable when opposed, but he
is not dead to feelings of generosity. An act like that would touch him
to the core, and he would do anything you asked—nay, let me know what it
is you wish, and I would pledge myself that he would do it."  She
pleaded urgently and almost imploringly, but I could not yield.

"I cannot do that.  Only last night he likened this struggle between us
to a duel, and you would ask me to disarm myself and throw away the only
means by which I can hope to win my way.  I am sorry, deeply and
sincerely sorry, but this is impossible."

"You would see him dragged into the dirt for the rabble to spit upon!"
Her changing mood, as she was swayed first by thoughts for me and then
by those for her brother, was painful to witness.

"He did not hesitate to have me treated as a criminal, senorita; he has
set me at defiance and refused everything I asked; and I cannot put
myself and others at his mercy.  But I will do this.  Let him set Sarita
Castelar free, and stay this Carlist persecution, and I will give up the
documents he fears, and say nothing of what I know.  More than that I
cannot offer you; and even that must depend upon the senorita being free
before I am placed in a position which compels me to take action against
him."

"What does that mean?  How long will you give me?  I must have time to
find him.  I cannot do anything without time.  You are iron to me in
your madness for this girl."

"Unfortunately I am not free to name any time."  I was not.  I did not
yet know what measures Mayhew had taken, and whether he had communicated
with the Palace.  My summons to the King might come at any hour, and I
was compelled to hold myself free to speak all I knew with regard to
Quesada in my interview there.  At the same time Dolores’ acute distress
of mind, and the knowledge of what she had done for me, filled me with a
desire to help her; while personally, I was anxious to get Sarita from
Quesada’s grip at the earliest possible moment, and to leave Spain.
Under pressure of these thoughts, I added: "This I can assure you, I
would far rather the matter ended as you wish, and will give you every
possible moment of time."

"I will go," she answered promptly.  "I depend on you.  You have given
me some hope, if not much.  If I fail with Sebastian"—and she closed her
eyes and sighed in the agony of the thought—"I will let you know at
once."

"And I will do nothing without first sending word to you," I promised in
reply.

We parted then, and when she left the room I found Mayhew waiting for me
in the corridor.

                             *CHAPTER XXXI*

                            *AT THE PALACE*

"Your lady visitors call early, Ferdinand," said Mayhew, rather drily.

"Yes, rather embarrassing, isn’t it?  But what news have you for me?
What happened yesterday?"

"More than enough to prove that you are a person of considerable
importance, I can tell you.  When I got your message by that exceedingly
sharp lad, Juan, that you were arrested, I went straight to the chief,
and within an hour a protest was in the hands of the Spanish Government,
couched in terms calculated to make them sit up, I promise you, and very
soon the whole machinery was at work to get you out.  They denied all
knowledge of you, however; but I expect a good deal would have happened
to-day if you hadn’t been set at liberty.  I told the chief this
morning, however, that you were here, and he wants to see you.  And
that’s about all—unless you want the details."

"Did you send any word to the Palace?"

"No, I kept that in reserve for to-day as a broadside, and, of course, I
said nothing to anyone about the papers you left with me."

"Good; just as I should have expected from you. And now, I’m going to
tell you the whole mess, and just see what’s best to be done;" and I
gave him a pretty full account of everything that had happened.

"You’re right, it is a devil of a mess," was his comment when I
finished.  "What do you suppose Quesada’s sister can do?"

"I haven’t a notion.  I’m just at the end of my wits, and can’t for the
life of me see what’s to be done."

"There’s one thing you may safely reckon on, and it isn’t a pleasant
thing anyway—that that beggar is sure to have a trump card up his sleeve
that will most likely outplay your best.  He’s the most cunning beggar
in all Spain.  He’s been in heaps of tight corners before, and wriggled
out just when it seemed impossible. And he won’t give in now, you bet.
I tell you what he’s likely to do—he knows just as well as lots of
others, that he’s the pivot of the whole Government; the one man for
instance, who, in the popular view, can wage this threatened war with
the States with some chance of success; and I wouldn’t be one little bit
surprised if he trumps you with a change of front and declares for war.
You don’t know as much as I do of Spanish politics, and can’t,
therefore, understand the holy mess that would follow here if the war
came.  He’d be the only man able to guide things; and in such a case you
might hammer at him in vain."

"But these documents, Livenza’s statement, my own knowledge, Sarita
Castelar’s evidence!" I cried, in protest.

"Strong enough in England, perhaps; but he’d deny everything; and do you
think anyone’s going to care two pence about them if the nation is in
danger.  He’d say the letters were forgeries; pop Livenza into prison,
or bribe or threaten him to change face; the lady is already safe in his
charge, and as a Carlist wouldn’t be believed even if she were at
liberty; and your statement would be listened to politely, and then
disregarded as that of an enemy of Spain and a friend of America. I’m
sorry to discourage you, but you asked my advice and that is—don’t count
on your weapons as he called them, and don’t believe for a moment that
you can really do him any harm.  He sits too firm in the saddle."

"But he told his sister that I could ruin him, and he showed the fear by
wanting to make me fight him."

"Mere play-acting, Ferdinand, nothing more.  He wanted to get the papers
back quietly if he could, and the quietest and safest way would have
been to have you arrested as Carbonnell, the Carlist, and sent somewhere
into the far provinces, and probably knocked on the head by the way or
shot in mistake—the kind of mistake that does happen at times.  His
sister appears to have cut that plan short, and naturally he tells her
she must get the papers back, if she could.  But if she couldn’t, it
didn’t follow that he wasn’t quite prepared to face you.  Don’t make the
mistake of thinking he will give up a jot or tittle of any plan he has,
whether public or private; he never has been known to yet, and even you
will never make him, strong as your case would be in any other country
and against any other man.  It’s part of his constitution, my dear
fellow.  He’s got all the energy and resource of a present day American
with all the confounded pride and stiff-necked doggedness of an Old
Castile noble.  A rummy combination, but the devil to fight."

"I shan’t give in," I said, firmly.  "And that I take it your advice is
that I should."

Mayhew shrugged his shoulders significantly.

"I’d make it different if I could.  I’m very sorry, for I can guess what
it means to you; but you’ve no chance;" and he shook his head,
hopelessly.  "Shall we go and see the chief?"

"I shan’t give in," I said again; but I am free to confess that his
counsel of despair had great effect upon me, and I went to the Embassy
in a very despondent mood.

I was closeted with the chief a considerable time, while I gave such
account of my experiences as I deemed advisable, and was questioned and
cross-questioned, and advised and congratulated in the customary
official manner, and finally counselled to return to England.  A pointed
question from me drew the reply that this last advice was the result of
a request from the Spanish Government, and I did not fail to see in it
the hand of Quesada.

My answer was an evasive one, to the effect that I would go so soon as I
had wound up such private affairs as I had to conclude in Madrid.

I rejoined Mayhew, feeling both ill at ease and out of temper.  A
half-day had passed, and I had done nothing toward effecting Sarita’s
release; while the hours were flying, and no word came from Dolores. My
apparent helplessness in other respects increased my anxiety to hear
that she had been successful with her brother; for I was fast coming
round to Mayhew’s gloomy view of the position.

Then came another complication.  When we went to the Hotel de l’Opera, I
found there an urgent summons from the Palace.  News of my arrest and
liberation had reached the young King, and he desired me to go to the
Palace that afternoon.  I scribbled a note to Dolores Quesada, telling
her I could not wait for news from her after three o’clock—the hour
appointed for the interview, and sent Mercy with it, Mayhew accompanying
her.

The reply to this put the climax to my anxiety.  It ran thus:

"Alas, my friend, I can do nothing.  I have just seen Sebastian, who is
now in a quite different mood.  He laughs at the thought of your doing
him any harm. ’Let him do his worst.  He can but break himself on the
wheel of his own efforts;’ were his words.  I am distracted with
misery."

I showed it to Mayhew, who read it thoughtfully.

"It could not be worse," he said.  "He has put the senorita in a safe
place, and is going to play the trump card that I was sure he had in
reserve somewhere. You should have accepted his challenge and shot him.
Only one thing can beat Quesada—and that’s death."

"I will do my best all the same," I answered; and in this mood I set out
for my interview at the Palace, revolving on the way all the possible
expedients that I could adopt to win even part of my purpose against the
powerful enemy who held his way with such grim tenacity and inflexible
resolve.

My reception at the Palace might have flattered even Royalty itself.
When I was ushered into the presence, the young King came running to me,
laying aside all attempt at dignity, and smiling with pleasure as he
held out his hands liked a pleased child.

"My Englishman of Podrida, at last!" he exclaimed, and he led me to the
Queen Mother, who was graciousness itself.

"You have kept the words of gratitude too long prisoners in my heart, my
lord.  The Queen would chide you, but the mother’s heart is too full for
anything but welcome for the man who saved her son."

"I trust your Majesties will pardon me.  The delay has been due to
causes as full of trouble as of urgency."

"My son has told me of your daring rescue, but I wish to hear it again
from you.  I am so anxious to know all, that I would have the tale even
before your own anxieties which, if we can, you must let us help you to
dispel."

"I have the mask here, my lord," cried the King, with all a boy’s
eagerness, bringing it out of a pocket.

"The story is a very simple one, your Majesty," I said, and then in as
few words as I could, I told it. She listened with the closest
attention, questioning me now and again on such points as interested her
most, or where she wished greater detail; and when I described how the
King was seized and carried into the carriage, and again how I had found
him fastened down and disguised, she clasped the boy to her, and her
changing colour and quickened breath gave evidence of her concern and
emotion.

"And you were alone through it all?" she exclaimed, when I finished.

"Fortune favoured me or I could not have succeeded, Madame.  Had not the
two men following the carriage met with an accident, I could have done
nothing.  As it was, the surprise of my attack did what no strength of
arm or skill or wit could have accomplished."

"Do not call it fortune?  It was rather the hand of Heaven guarding my
dear son’s safety, and you were the chosen instrument.  And should you
know those miscreants again?"  Her tone hardened and her eyes flashed,
as she put the question; and I thought then I could discern the feeling
which had had as much to do with her impatience at my delay in coming to
the Palace as her desire to thank me.  She was burning with all a
Spaniard’s hot eagerness for revenge.  But it was not my cue to strike
at the agents, and my reply was guarded.

"It is possible that if they were face to face with me, I could identify
them; but the thing was hurried, the work of no more than a few moments,
and my English eyes are not sufficiently accustomed to distinguish
between Spanish faces."

"Ah, I am disappointed," cried the Queen, frowning.

"But I can do more than identify the men who actually did the ill-work,
Madame; I know by whose hidden hand the wires of the plot were pulled."

"Tell us that, and you will add a thousand times to the obligation that
Spain and we owe you, my lord," she exclaimed, strenuously.  "Who is the
arch-traitor?"

"I shall have need of your Majesty’s patient indulgence."

"And you will not ask it in vain, Lord Glisfoyle, if you do not seek it
for these villainous Carlists, who would have robbed me of my son and
dealt this foul blow at Spain."  Then with a quick thought, she asked:
"But how comes it that you, an English nobleman, here in Madrid no
longer than a few weeks, can have learnt these things?"  I believe I
could detect a touch of suspicion in her manner; and the King looked up
sharply into her face and then across at me.

"By a coincidence in regard to my name, your Majesty.  I came to Madrid
but a short time ago to join the staff of the British Embassy; I was not
then Lord Glisfoyle; and by a chain of coincidences some of the plans of
the misguided Carlists became known to me."

"Do you mean you knew of this intended plot against my son?"

"There are always rumours and reports, Madame, and such gossip was, of
course, current in your capital—and equally, of course, well known to
your Government and officials.  But this was different; and the definite
tidings came to me at a time and in a form which made it impossible for
me to act otherwise than as I did."

"What was your name then, if not Lord Glisfoyle?" she broke in.

"Ferdinand Carbonnell, the younger son of my late father."

"Ferdinand Carbonnell!  Ah, then——" the sentence remained unfinished,
and I stood in silence watching her and waiting for the conclusion.  I
could guess her thought.

"Ferdinand Carbonnell is a well-known Carlist leader, Lord Glisfoyle,"
and she spoke in a tone that augured but ill for my success.

"And for that Carlist leader I was mistaken, your Majesty, and working
through that strange mistake, Providence enabled me to rescue your son
from a far worse fate than that which any Carlist ever designed. In
following this strange double career I carried my life in my hands,
risking misunderstanding at the hands of your Majesty’s agents, and
putting my life to the hazard of any Carlist discovery of my real
character."

"You cannot doubt him, mother," cried the King, protestingly.

"You have said too much or too little, my lord.  I beg you to speak
frankly."

"I would ask your Majesty by whose advice it was that your son came to
be in such a case as made this attempt possible?" I said; and the
question went home, for she started quickly.

"By the advice of my Ministers, who felt that our confidence in the
people should be shown in a way which all could see for themselves.  Do
you propose to arraign my Government on a charge of treason?"

"I do not arraign your Government as a whole, your Majesty; but what if
it were proved to you that one of them, discontented with his present
power and influence, great though they be, had aimed to make them
greater; had thought that under the Republican form of Government there
were wider scope for his ambition; and had planned, therefore, a double
stroke of policy—say, for instance, the removal of your son from the
Throne, using the Carlists for his purpose, and at the same time
preparing to crush their power when he had used them, employing the very
pretext of the plot as the cause of his drastic measures of repression?
What if there be a man in your confidence who designed to overthrow the
Monarchy, and climb on the ruins of the Throne to the place of supreme
power in the country as President of a Republic to be proclaimed?  What
if these plans were all laid and settled in every detail; and yet made
with such consummate skill and shrewdness, that even the crumbling of
the corner-stone—this attempt on His Majesty—still left him higher,
firmer, and stronger in position and influence than ever?  What if the
subtle organisation by which this Carlist rising has been crushed almost
in a day was the outcome, not of a desire to save His Majesty’s throne
from attack, but of an intention to break down what—should the Monarchy
be no longer in existence—would have been the one remaining possible
obstacle to this man’s success? Would your Majesty say that these
Carlists or the arch-plotter were the more to be feared, the more
culpable, the more dangerous?"

I spoke with rising vehemence, and my daring words frightened both my
hearers.  The Queen was almost pale when I ended.

"You cannot make this good, my lord.  I cannot believe it."

"Yet every word is true and can be made good.  The man I mean is your
most powerful Minister—Senor Sebastian Quesada."

"It cannot be.  It is impossible," cried the Queen. "You frighten me, my
lord.  What proofs have you?"

The intense impression created by my charge, emboldened me to go a step
farther and place all on the cast.  The Queen was so agitated, and the
young King so deeply and keenly moved by my words, that I could not fail
to see what weight would attach to any request I put while they were in
that mood; and taking my fortune boldly in both hands, I resolved to
risk everything on the chance of my being able to prove my charge
against Quesada.  Mayhew’s words of despondent caution recurred to me,
but my ears were deaf to everything save the one absorbing purpose that
swayed me.

"His Majesty was good enough on the day, when under Providence I was
able to snatch him from the hands of his enemies, to promise to grant me
such request as I might prefer.  You, Madame, to-day, with gracious
sympathy at the mention of my cares and anxieties, expressed the
generous desire to help me. May I entreat you then, remembering what I
have done, to grant me a favour should I make good my words, and bring
home to the real traitor this treachery against your august family and
your throne?"

"You would make conditions, my lord?"

"Your Majesty, I am but a suppliant."

"What is this favour?"

"That your Majesties will be graciously disposed to pardon the
unfortunate dupes who have been misled by the man who has used them for
his own purpose?"

"It is impossible, Lord Glisfoyle, utterly impossible. You cannot mean
this.  Stay, I have heard a possible reason for this strange request.  I
have heard your name coupled with one of the most daring of these
Carlists—a Senorita Castelar—by whose influence we are told Ferdinand
Carbonnell, the Englishman, took up the role of Ferdinand Carbonnell,
the Spanish Carlist. Has this anything to do with this favour you ask?"

"Your Majesty, the dearest wish of my life is to make the Senorita
Castelar my wife; as the farthest thought of hers would be to make me a
Carlist.  I trust that my acts have shown this for me, rendering mere
protests needless."

"Mother!" cried the young King, eagerly, like the staunch little
champion of my cause that he was.

"These are matters of deep state importance, and we cannot follow only
our inclinations," said his mother in rebuke; and the tone was hard and
unpromising.  "We cannot make any such promise as a condition; but if
you prove your charge—and put to the proof it must be—the double claim
you will have upon us will make it hard to resist whatever you ask.  I
can say no more."

"I leave the appeal to your Majesty’s heart," I answered, with a deep
obeisance.  "And I will make good my words now and here."  I drew out
then the compromising letters in Quesada’s handwriting, and placing them
in the Queen’s hands, I told her at great length and with all possible
detail the story of the Minister’s treachery.

To this narrative she listened with even more engrossed attention than
to my former one of her son’s rescue; and as I drove home point after
point and saw them tell, I felt that I was winning her to my side all
reluctantly and dead against her prejudice in her Minister’s favour,
until she herself admitted that the route of the young King’s drive and
the lack of guards on that eventful afternoon had been suggested by
Quesada himself.

At the close she was so overcome that, feeling embarrassed, I asked
leave to withdraw; but she detained me and gradually put aside her
weakness.

"I still cannot believe it, Lord Glisfoyle; but it shall be tested to
the uttermost and every means of investigation shall be exhausted.  On
that you have my word. And now——" she had got as far as that when there
came an interruption, and a message was brought that an immediate
audience was craved by one of the Secretaries of State on a matter of
the deepest urgency.

"You will not leave the Palace, my lord.  I wish to see you again," and
I withdrew to an ante-room to await her pleasure.  I was satisfied with
what I had done; and as I sat thinking over the interview, I noticed
signs of much excitement and commotion; messengers kept coming and going
quickly; high dignitaries and officials were hurrying this way and that,
and the number of people in the great chamber increased largely, all
talking together in clusters, scared in looks and excited in manner,
although subdued in tone.

Presently the infection of the general excitement spread to me, and
looking about me I caught sight of one of the two officers who had come
to me at the Hotel de l’Opera on the night of the King’s rescue, Colonel
Vasca, and I went up to him.

"Is there any special news to cause this commotion?" I asked, when we
had exchanged greetings.

"Is it possible you have not heard it?  The Minister of the Interior,
Senor Quesada, has been assassinated within the last hour in his own
house."

"Quesada dead!" I exclaimed in profound astonishment. And then by a
freak of memory Mayhew’s words recurred to me—"Only one thing will ever
beat Quesada—and that’s death."  "How did it happen? Who was the
assassin?" I asked.

"Some villain of a Carlist, it is believed, in revenge for the blow
which the Government have just struck at them.  But they will pay a
heavy price for so foul a deed."

My heart sank within me at the news.  I realised in an instant what it
must mean to my poor Sarita and everyone leagued with her, and I went
back to my seat overwrought and half-distracted.  She had indeed sown
the wind to reap the whirlwind, and I could not hope to save her.

When at length the summons came for me to return to the Queen Regent, I
followed the messenger almost like a man in a dream.

                            *CHAPTER XXXII*

                          *LIVENZA’S REVENGE*

The young King was no longer with the Queen Regent when I entered, and I
found two or three of the chief Ministers of State in conference with
her.

The news of the assassination had caused profound dismay, intensified in
the case of the Queen Regent by the fact that it had followed with such
dramatic swiftness upon the heels of my charges against the powerful and
favourite Minister.

"You have heard of this fearful deed, Lord Glisfoyle?" was the Queen’s
question on my entrance.

"I have learnt it within the last few minutes in the ante-chamber, your
Majesty."

"I have told my lords here the strange charges you brought against Senor
Quesada.  Do you still maintain them?"

"In every word and detail, Madame," and, at her request, I repeated to
them everything I had said before.

"It is certainly a most extraordinary story," said one of them, the Duke
of Novarro, Minister of War, in a tone which suggested unbelief and
hostility.

"And the most extraordinary part of it, my lord," I replied, "is the
fact that he was enabled to lay all these plans without anyone of his
colleagues or associates having a suspicion of the truth.  No doubt if
the dead man’s papers are secured in time, they will yield abundant
proof of everything."  The hint was acted upon at once, and messengers
were despatched to see that this was done.

"Can you throw any light upon the motive for this deed?" asked the Duke.

"I have not heard the actual circumstances, but the Minister was a man
who had made many enemies, private as well as public.  I should look for
the murderer among his private enemies."  And even as I spoke, my own
words prompted a thought, and the closing scene at Calvarro’s farm
flashed across my mind.

"Do you mean you would not set this down to Carlist feeling?" he asked
next, in the same tone of unbelief.

"It was an act of private revenge, no more and no less," I answered
firmly, "and I believe that I can find the means to prove it so."  The
suggestion was welcome to all present.  The murder of a colleague from
private motives was obviously a far less disturbing event to Ministers
than an assassination designed as a protest against Ministerial policy.
But the Duke was none the less hostile to me.

"Her Majesty has informed us that your lordship has gone so far as to
request an amnesty for these Carlists as the return for the services you
have rendered to the nation and the Throne by the rescue of the King.
But you will of course understand that, now at any rate, such a request
cannot be conceded."

"His Majesty himself gave me a pledge that such favour as I asked should
be granted," I returned.

"His Majesty is too young to understand the needs of policy, my lord;
and the pledge was given before this had occurred.  Everything is
changed by such a deed."

"His Majesty is not too young to keep his word," I retorted, bluntly.

"The pardon of any individual conspirator might still be granted, Lord
Glisfoyle," interposed the Queen, pointedly, "provided no complicity in
this were found."  I understood her meaning, but would not yield my
point.

"I have your Majesty’s gracious assurance that in the event of my
proving the charges I have brought, my claims would be hard to resist
whatever the favour I asked."

"You surely cannot think of pressing this, now," was her reply, with a
dash of surprise.

"Most respectfully I must press it with all the power and force at my
command; and with all submission to your Majesty, I am bound to say, I
can prefer no other and no less request.  There is no proof that this is
a Carlist outrage."

My firmness was altogether unwelcome, and the Queen and her Ministers
showed both irritation and impatience at my persistence.  But I cared
nothing for that.  I was fighting for what I believed would be the one
certain method of winning Sarita and removing her last objections, and I
would not give way.

"Your solicitude for these miscreants is out of place, my lord, and what
you ask is a sheer impossibility," said the Duke, haughtily.  "Any
further insistence must, as you will see, wear a curious look.  These
wretches are none the less traitors because their first plot failed.
This second stroke has not failed."

"Had the man who has met this tragic death succeeded in his project, my
lord Duke; if the young King were not only abducted but put to death; if
the Monarchy had been overthrown and a Republic proclaimed in its place;
if Her Majesty here were an exile from her kingdom, yourselves in
danger, and the country in the throes of a bloody revolution, would you
have deemed it then too great a price to have paid for the stroke which
would have prevented everything? That was what the rescue of the young
King meant, nothing less; and it will not be affected by Senor Quesada’s
death, if I can prove it to have been a private act.  But as you will,"
I said, indignantly, after a moment’s pause, "I trusted to the royal
pledge, and if you, my lords, advise that the royal word of honour shall
be broken, I, of course, can say no more.  May I crave your Majesty’s
permission to withdraw?"

It was a bold stroke, but it did more to help me than hours of argument
and wrangling.  At the mention of her son’s death the Queen winced and
grew suddenly pale, and came over at once to my side.

"What Lord Glisfoyle urges is true, gentlemen," she said, "and he who
saved the King, my son, cannot be allowed to find my ears deaf to his
plea.  What you ask, Lord Glisfoyle, shall be granted, if you can prove
this crime to be no Carlist outrage, and if my influence and my son’s
will stand for aught in the councils of Spain."  She spoke proudly and
almost sternly, and the others were as much discomfited as I was elated.

"I beg your Majesty to pardon my frankness of speech," I said, with the
utmost deference, "and to accept my most earnest and heartfelt
gratitude.  I believe that already I know where to look for the man who
has done this, and with your permission will at once set about the
search.  May I ask that the powers and services of the police may be
placed at my disposal?"

"You shall have anything and every thing you desire, Lord Glisfoyle.  If
you desire to leave at once the necessary authority shall be sent after
you to your hotel."

I bowed myself out then, and drove in hot haste to the Hotel de l’Opera
in search of Mayhew.  The news of the assassination of Quesada had
reached the hotel, and I found them all in a mood of deep concern, and
full of anxiety to learn the result of my long interview at the Palace.

"I have not time for a word now, except that I have gained all I wished
on one condition—that I trace the man who killed Quesada, and prove it
murder and not a Carlist assassination."

"But you cannot," cried Mayhew.  "It’s all over the city that——"

"I can and will," I broke in.  "But listen, my dear fellow.  Important
documents will come to me from the Palace in a few minutes.  I am going
now to Quesada’s house, and I wish you to bring them to me there the
instant they arrive;" and without waiting another moment I was hurrying
away, when my sister cried:

"Let me come with you, Ferdinand.  That poor girl will be in such
sorrow."

"A good thought, Mercy.  Quick;" and we drove away together.

But at Quesada’s I met with a check.  The police were in possession of
the house and would not admit me, though I urged and insisted and
stormed in turns. Senor Rubio was there in charge, and nothing would
move him.  There was no option, therefore, except to await the arrival
of the necessary authority; and scribbling a hasty note to the Duke of
Novarro to tell him the state of matters and to urge despatch, I sent
Mercy with it to the Palace in search of him.

Then I tried to curb my impatience while I waited, and to occupy the
time I made an examination of the outside of the house in the possible
hope of some discovery which might help me.

I was thoroughly convinced that the murder was the act of Juan Livenza,
and that I should find he had been at the house and had seen Quesada.  I
could not get a single question answered, however, and even my scrutiny
of the exterior of the house and the grounds brought police
interference.

But this was not before I had seen that which set me thinking hard.  The
window of the library in which I had last seen Quesada, the room he
chiefly used, overlooked the garden at the rear, and one of the panes of
glass was broken.  An examination of the stonework underneath it, and of
the ground immediately below, revealed marks which seemed to tell me how
such a deed might well have been committed.

One or two branches of a shrub close to the wall were broken and bent,
and one of the stones, which projected beyond the rest sufficiently to
afford a precarious foothold, was slightly chipped and scraped on the
edge. It was just such a mark as might have been caused by a man
standing on it to look into the window, and on making the experiment I
found that a man of Livenza’s height, which was about my own, could
easily have grasped the stone sill, looked into the room, and fired a
revolver through the broken pane.

Just as I had made this discovery the police ordered me away from the
house, and I went back to the front to wait for my tarrying authority.
Mercy brought it. The Duke had been at the Palace, and on the receipt of
my note had given her a paper which he declared would do all I wished
until the more formal authority should be ready.

Armed with this I summoned Rubio, showed it him, and with my sister was
admitted to the house.  I sent her at once in search of Dolores while I
questioned Rubio.

"You see my authority, Senor Rubio; be good enough to tell me all you
know of the matter, and as quickly as possible."

"We know very little as yet.  His Excellency was alone in the library
when I arrived to see him on business.  The servant took my name to him,
and came running back in alarm, crying that he was lying dead on the
floor, having dropped out of his chair where he had been sitting.  He
was as dead as a coffin, shot through the head, here in the temple," and
he put his hand to his own head to indicate the place.

"How do you suppose it happened?"

"No one can tell, senor.  He had been dead perhaps half an hour, so the
doctors said; no one was with him, and no one was known to have seen him
for perhaps an hour before that time.  No cry was heard; no sound,
indeed; and yet he was dead.  The Carlists must have obtained admission
to the house secretly, and have escaped as they came."

"Take me to the room," I said, and he led the way in silence.  "Show me
exactly where he was found."  He pointed out the spot.  "Now just sit in
that chair a moment;" and, much wondering, he took his seat at Quesada’s
writing table.  I stood on the side away from the window, and a glance
was enough to show me that his head was in a direct line with the broken
pane of glass.

"Was the window fastened?" I asked.

"Yes, I myself examined it."

"That broken pane of glass?"

"It was broken by his Excellency himself to-day, and he had given orders
for the repair of it."

The answer surprised me, but a moment’s reflection showed me what might
have happened.

"How came it broken, and when; do you know?"

"How, I do not know; but it was done when Colonel Livenza was here
to-day, closeted with his Excellency. They were, as perhaps you know,
senor, closely associated together."  There was a furtive, half eager,
half alarmed, and wholly cunning look on Rubio’s face, which sent the
thought flashing upon me that he could say a good deal of Quesada’s
private matters if he pleased.

"I know much more than you think, Senor Rubio. These two were close
friends, you say; did they part to-day on friendly terms?"

"I was not here, senor," was the guarded reply.

But I could read the facts without his help.  Livenza had come to demand
an explanation, and intended, no doubt, to wreak his revenge on the
spot.  There had been a quarrel, and probably some kind of tussle, in
which this window had been broken.  Livenza had for some reason
abstained from shooting Quesada there and then; but he had been quick to
see that if he left and went round to the back of the house, he could
fire at his victim through the broken window, and kill him without
anyone suspecting the act.  I got some confirmation of this theory by
questioning the servant, who had seen his master after Livenza had left
the house, and had noticed that he was unusually excited and angry.

There was the fact that no sound of a pistol shot had been heard; but
the room had double doors and a heavy portiere curtain, and this might
well account for such a thing.  I was, at any rate, satisfied with my
theory, and while I was with Rubio, Mayhew arrived with the official
papers placing the police services at my disposal.  I showed them to
him, and they increased his apprehension.

"I shall do all I can to help you, senor," he assured me, nervously.

"You will find it safer," said I, significantly.  "Have any of Senor
Quesada’s papers been removed?"

"None," he answered, with a slight start.

"Well, then my friend Mr. Mayhew here, of the British Embassy, will
remain and see that everything is sealed.  And now tell me, do you
suspect anyone of this murder?"

"It is the work of the cursed Carlists, of course. His Excellency’s life
was more than once attempted by them."

"Put that idea out of your head.  This was a private crime, and we have
to bring it home to the murderer. Where is Senorita Castelar?"  I put
the question abruptly, and looked at him fixedly.  He started very
uneasily.

"She could not do it."

"I am perfectly aware of that, but I must know at once where she is.
Understand, your future will depend upon your answering me frankly.  You
know quite well where she is, for you have been Senor Quesada’s
instrument in all that business.  When you arrested her at the station
yesterday, where did you take her, and to what place did you remove her
afterwards?"

"She was taken to the prison of San Antonio, and afterwards removed by
his Excellency’s orders—I don’t know where."

"I don’t believe you," I said, bluntly.  "I know you are lying, indeed,
and if you don’t tell me the truth on the spot, the first use I’ll make
of this authority will be to have you clapped into gaol yourself, and
the whole of your private papers searched.  And you know as well as I
what we shall find among them.  I’ll give you two minutes to choose."

"I don’t know, senor, I don’t, upon my soul; and, by the Holy Saints, I
swear I don’t," he cried, eagerly, panic-stricken by the threat.

"One of your minutes is gone.  Silas, call up a couple of the
gendarmes;" and Mayhew turned to the door.

"Stop, senor, stop for the love of Heaven.  I don’t know.  I wish to
help you; I swear I do.  But I’m innocent of everything.  Give me time
to think."

"Your innocence wears a strange dress, Rubio, and I won’t give you
another second."

"I can tell you what I think, senor," said the bully, trembling like a
child.  "It is most likely his Excellency would have had the senorita
taken to a house at Escorias, which I believe he had prepared for her."

"If your thoughts are wrong you’ll find yourself in a hole.  Now, a last
question.  Is it possible that Colonel Livenza can have found this out
in any way?"

"Mother of Angels, I believe I see it now," he exclaimed, excitedly, and
then was silent.

"You are either hiding some fact or hatching another lie," I said,
sternly.  "I should have thought you could see the danger of that with
me."

"I will tell you, senor, I will, indeed, everything.  I came to this
house this afternoon in consequence of a message from his Excellency.
He had for some time had a suspicion that Colonel Livenza had played him
false—there was, I believe, something in which you yourself were
concerned with the colonel.  A warrant was made out and handed to me,
and I was to wait for further instructions before making the arrest.
This afternoon his Excellency rang me up on the telephone—his instrument
is on the table here, you see—and he was speaking to me when the message
broke off suddenly.  He had got as far as this—’Go to Escorias and
execute the warrant I gave you recently to arrest——’  There it stopped,
and I remember now there was a sharp noise I could not understand.  I
thought something was wrong with the wires.  I waited for him to speak
again, and when nothing came through I spoke to him and rang the bell.
But I could get no answer, and in the end thought it best to come to the
house for further instructions.  I thought he might wish the senorita
removed again, and came up to see."

"Then you did know where she was," I said, pointedly. "And I’m glad you
see the prudence of treating me frankly.  How do we get to Escorias?"

"We can drive in less than two hours, senor."  I rang the bell and
ordered the fastest pair of horses in Quesada’s stable to be put in at
once, and while waiting for them, told Mayhew what I wished in regard to
the dead man’s papers.  As soon as the carriage came, I took Rubio and
one of his assistants with me, and ordered the coachman to drive at top
speed to Escorias.

Everything seemed clear to me now, and this unexpected development
filled me with a new fear for Sarita’s safety.  Livenza, full of his
wild passion for revenge, had gone to Quesada, and a fiery interview had
taken place between the two, in which the Minister’s old ascendancy over
the weaker man had so far asserted itself, that the latter had been
unable to carry out his purpose in the room.  He had either discovered,
or Quesada, with the probable object of pacifying him, had told him
where Sarita was detained, and had very likely suggested that he should
go and take her away at once—calculating with diabolical cunning that
the temptation to Livenza to see her again and have her in his power,
would prove irresistible.  In this way the Minister had saved his life
for the moment, and when Livenza had left, Quesada had planned to have
him arrested.  In the meantime, the murderer had seen his way to achieve
both his purposes—to kill his victim secretly, by shooting him from the
garden, through the broken window, and then to rush off to Sarita.  He
had thus probably heard the broken telephone message being spoken, and
at the dramatic moment when Quesada’s attention would be fixed on the
telephone and his ears covered by the receivers, the shot had been fired
with instantly fatal results.

So certain was my belief in my theory, and so vivid the impressions I
had gathered, that I could picture in my thoughts every step and act in
the progress of the tragedy.  But there was one question I could not
answer: and the thought of it filled me with an acute pang of alarm.

What were Livenza’s intentions in regard to Sarita?

In the room at Calvarro’s farm, his passion for her had been at first
chilled by his fear of me, and then dominated by the even fiercer
passion of revenge upon the man who had duped and out-witted him.  But
this thirst for revenge had now been sated by the death of Quesada, and
who could say what wild form the recrudescence of the mad love-passion
would assume?

Sarita, as I knew from her own lips, had fooled him. She had allowed him
to make love to her; had possibly fed his passion with subtle but
dangerous suggestions of a response to his love; and had won him for the
Carlists by these desperate means because no others were present to her
hand.  My own words of warning to her recurred to me; and if he
succeeded in forcing his way to her now that his enemy and master was
dead, what limit could I believe he would place to his violence?

I had always regarded him as a man liable to be driven by passion across
the borderland between sanity and madness; he had passed through more
than one crisis of acute mental shock within the last few days; and it
was more than probable that the deed of blood he had just committed,
itself the act of a madman, would suffice to rob him of the last vestige
of sane responsibility.

He would go to Sarita with the blood of their mutual oppressor still hot
on his murderous hands, and if we were not in time to save her from him,
what hope was there for her?  I knew how she would receive him; and the
thought maddened me until in my burning impatience I could not sit
still, but thrust my head out of the carriage-window to urge the driver
constantly to fresh exertions, although we were already travelling at
headlong speed.

I was on fire with eagerness, and racked with alarm at the looming
possibility of failure, even when all had gone so well.

                            *CHAPTER XXXIII*

                       *THE HUT ON THE HILLSIDE*

No speed that the driver could get out of the mettlesome horses was
swift enough to keep pace with my fears or to ease the pricking of my
alarms.

Our route to Escorias lay along the road where I had followed and
rescued the young King, and as we flew along, bumping, jolting and
swaying, covering the level road at the gallop, dashing down and
rattling up the hills, I could measure the distance by the different
spots which were fixed in my memory by the incidents of that memorable
ride.

"How far is it beyond Podrida?" I asked Rubio, having to shout the
question to make myself heard amid the clatter and racket of the jolting
carriage.

"At this pace, half an hour," came the reply, in jerks. "If we reach
there without a smash."  My answer was to lean out once more and shout
to the driver to hurry; and then I threw myself back in my seat, folded
my arms, and yielded myself up anew to the torture of my distracting
thoughts.

I tried to estimate how long a start Livenza would have of us, how far
he could be in advance, and what time he would have for the execution of
the plan he had formed, whatever that might be.  And my lowest
calculation alarmed me.

The murder had been committed about two hours and a half before I had
got to Quesada’s house; I had been there about one hour; and thus
Livenza would have three and a half hours’ start of us.  From this we
might deduct the time he would spend in Madrid before setting out for
Escorias; but as he would be in fear of discovery, I dared not hope that
he would remain a minute longer than would be necessary to procure a
horse or some kind of conveyance.  His own horses would be at his
immediate disposal, of course; and if he had had them at hand, he might
have started the instant after he had shot his enemy.  This would give
him quite three hours’ start, even allowing for the quicker pace at
which we were following in pursuit. And in three hours what could he not
do?

There was, of course, room to hope that he might have had to return to
his house to make some preparations for his flight; and I harassed and
worried myself with a hundred speculations about this: whether he would
not have gone to Quesada’s with everything in readiness for flight; or
whether he had thought that he would be taken at once, or even killed by
Quesada, and had thus set his affairs in order before going.  To
speculate on his actions in such a case, was, however, of no more value
than to count the waves on the seashore; and I got no further than an
ever-consuming desire for yet greater speed.

"Close there now, senor," cried Rubio, at last, looking out of the
window into the gloom.  "A few minutes."

"Thank Heaven for that," I exclaimed, fervently.

"And that we’ve escaped a smash at that mad pace."  We had left the high
road, and were going less rapidly along a narrow country lane, and could
speak without so much effort.  "It’s going to be a wild night," he
added.

"I wish we were there, or rather that we could have been there two hours
ago."

"I think we shall be in time, senor.  The place is not easy to find.  I
think it will be all right there."

When the carriage stopped I sprang out, followed by Rubio, and hurried
up to the house, which lay back some distance from the lane, along a
rough, ill-kept carriage drive.

"It’s evidently all right, senor.  If anything had happened we should
see some signs of it," said my companion, as he knocked loudly.  A man
opened the door, and touched his forehead as he recognised Rubio. "Good
evening, Carlos.  All well here?"

"All well, Senor Rubio;" and at the word I breathed a deep sigh of
relief.

"The senorita is well, Carlos?"

"Quite well, Senor Rubio, and in her rooms."

"No visitors, I suppose?" was asked, casually.

"Yes, senor; Colonel Livenza, from his Excellency, has been here."

"_Been_ here?" I cried, in surprise.  "Tell us, quickly, what you mean?"

"He came with a letter from his Excellency, to see the senorita.  He
brought some urgent news, he said, and he was with her about half an
hour, and then left."

"How long ago was that?"

"He has been gone maybe an hour, or perhaps less."

"Quick work," muttered Rubio.  "Show the senor here to the senorita’s
rooms," he added, to the man. "Shall I go with you, senor?"

"No, wait, please," I answered, following the man upstairs, my heart
beating quickly at the thought of seeing Sarita again.  He went up to
the floor above, the rooms of which were shut off from the staircase by
a door which I saw had been recently placed there. This he unlocked and
stood aside for me to pass.

"The first door on the right is the sitting-room, senor," he said,
respectfully, and I went to it and knocked.  Getting no reply, I knocked
again loudly; and again failing to get any response, my fears, that
after all something was wrong, began to revive.  I knocked a third time,
and still getting no answer tried to open the door, and found it locked
on the inside.  I called Sarita, loudly, by name then, knowing my voice
would re-assure her, and when no response came, I tried the other doors
and found them locked like the first, on the inside.

I called up Rubio then.

"Does the senorita generally lock her doors?" I asked Carlos.

"I have never known her to do it before, senor."

"Something is wrong; we must break our way in;" and I sent Carlos down
at once for tools.

"What can it mean?" he said, in a tone of dismay; and as soon as the
tools were brought he set about forcing an entrance.

"Did you see the senorita after Colonel Livenza left?" I asked the man.

"My wife did, senor.  She said she was tired, and complained of a
headache, and that she would go to bed early, and asked us to keep the
house quiet and not disturb her."

"She has gone," I exclaimed, as the meaning of it all rushed upon me.
"He brought with him the means for her to escape, and under some pretext
induced her to fly, after she had lulled the suspicions of these two
with this plea."

And so it proved.  The rooms were empty; and an open window, from which
hung a knotted rope fastened to a bedstead, told us plainly enough how
the escape had been made.  For a moment my heart sank with dismay at the
sight; but I rallied under pressure of the need for instant action.

"We must follow and find them," I said, promptly. "Which way can they
have taken?  It is clear that he induced her to escape, and while they
were together they were making these preparations.  He left about an
hour ago, and as the senorita had then to complete her arrangements she
cannot have been gone very long. How can we trace them?"  A question to
Carlos sufficed to show that they must have left by the lane we had
come; for it led nowhere but to the house.  They had not passed us on
the road, and it was clear, therefore, that they must have turned in the
opposite direction from the capital.

There were two horses in the stable, and I had these saddled, and rode
off with Rubio, ordering the carriage with Rubio’s assistant to follow
us at such pace as the coachman could get out of the smoking, lathered
animals who had brought us so well from Madrid.

At first the trail was broad and easy to follow.  We had scarcely turned
into the high road when we met some men, who told us enough to show that
Livenza and his companion were on horseback, riding at a moderate pace,
and were not more than a mile or two distant. We covered four or five
miles at the gallop, stopping wherever we met anyone on the road to make
inquiries; and it was soon abundantly clear that we were overtaking them
fast.  They seemed to be keeping to the high road, for what purpose or
whither bound it was impossible to guess; nor did it matter much so long
as we were rapidly closing up to them.

Then the scent failed suddenly.  We had rattled along for a couple of
miles or so, and I was expecting to overtake them at any moment, when a
carter whom we questioned declared that no one answering to the
description had passed him.  The news was serious indeed; it was now
late, there were few people abroad; the sparsely-scattered houses and
cottages were closed, and the inmates abed; we had passed more than one
branch road; and thus the chances of our tracking them ran down to zero.

We turned our horses’ heads, and at the first of the branch roads drew
rein to confer.  Rubio had no stomach for the work of further search,
and was for doing no more until we could get sufficient help to continue
the hunt vigorously the next morning in the daylight.  This, no doubt,
was a counsel of reason; but I was in anything but a reasonable mood,
and would not listen to him—much to his disgust.

"We know just about where they were last seen on the high road," I said.
"They can’t ride about all night in these by-lanes; if they were making
for any definite town they would have had to stick to the main road; and
we must take these by-roads in turn, and ride a few miles along each of
them.  You follow the first, and I’ll take the next.  We shall find them
in that way."

"It is useless, senor.  We shall only wear ourselves and our horses out
to no purpose," he protested; but I insisted, and sending him down the
first lane, I rode on to the next, and dashed along it through the rain
that was now falling in gusty, blusterous squalls. But I found nothing
to help my search; not a soul did I see, not a cottage or building of
any kind; and with something like a groan of disappointment, I pulled up
at length, and began to retrace my steps.

Then what might have been expected happened—I lost my way.  Puzzled by
the darkness I took a wrong turning which, instead of leading me back to
the high road, brought me out by a rough zig-zag way on to a wild, bleak
hillside, where it ended; and I was stranded, far away from any sign of
a habitation, in the pitch darkness, with the wind howling round me and
the rain falling in torrents.

For an hour or more I groped about, having at times to dismount and lead
my horse, until I realised that I was hopelessly lost, and that I had
not only no chance of discovering Sarita that night, but should be lucky
if I had not to spend the night in the open.

I was halting for the twentieth time under the shelter of trees to
escape some of the pelting rain, when my luck turned, and I caught sight
of a glimmer of light faintly quivering through the darkness above me.
Where light was, some human being must be also, and if money or force
could prevail, that human being should guide me back to the high road
and safety; and I led my horse in a bee-line toward the light,
stumbling, floundering, and slipping over the sloppy, uneven ground, now
blundering into a ditch or sinking ankle deep into a vegetable patch, or
almost breaking my shins against stone heaps, until I found that the
light came from the window of a cottage.

Then something happened to fill me with the inspiring hope that my good
luck was far better than I could have dared to hope.  I was close to the
cottage when I ran up against a couple of horses tethered to some
railings; and on running my hands over them I found both were saddled,
and that one carried a side saddle. My excitement at this was intense;
for I believed that luck, chance, fate, Providence, call it what you
will, had done what no judgment or skill could have had accomplished,
and had led me right to Livenza’s hiding-place.

In a moment, all my instincts of caution were awake again.  I led my
horse away from the others, fastened him securely, and crept up to the
window where the light glimmered.  Although the rain and wind were
raging with such violence that no sound I made was at all likely to
penetrate within, I picked my way with the utmost care, and stealing up
to the window, peered in. I could not see much, as there was a dirty
ragged, white curtain, which prevented my getting more than a glimpse at
one side; but I saw enough to confirm my belief.

Livenza was there.  I could see him plainly, as he stood by the door of
the room, leaning against it, his arms folded, his head bent down, and
his features moody, frowning, and dogged.  As I watched him he looked up
toward the corner of the room by the window, and in his blood-shot,
haggard eyes was a wild, dangerous light that told all too plainly of
the fire of insanity.  His lips moved, but I could not hear the words;
and at the instant a great gust of wind rushed against the small
casement window, and set it clattering and shaking as though to burst it
in.

Sarita I could not see, but when he spoke she made a movement forward,
which brought her face into the line of light, and her profile was
silhouetted for a second on the dirty, wind-rustled curtain.

Turning then, I felt my way to the door of the cottage, only to find it
fast bolted, apparently on the inside.  I raised my riding whip to knock
for admission when a thought stayed me.  If I was right, and Livenza’s
mind had completely given way, what would be the possible effect of any
interruption?  I scented danger plainly.  It might drive him to the
instant execution of any plan which might have formed in his mad brain,
and the very effort at rescue might be only the signal for him to act.
This might mean nothing less than Sarita’s death.

I went back to the window, therefore, in deep perplexity, searching my
wits for some means of ascertaining how matters stood.  He was in the
same position as before, and just then another tempestuous gust of wind
dashed against the window, the casement of which strained and creaked on
its hinges.  And this gave me an idea.

Taking off my overcoat I rolled it round my arm and waited for such
another gust, when I dashed my arm against the casement, bursting it
partially open, and then drew back hastily into the dark.

A cry from Sarita was followed by a shout from Livenza, who came across
hurriedly to the window.

"It’s only the wind," I heard him say in a strident tone as he tore
aside the curtain.  "Not the police. You needn’t be afraid of
interruption."  He tried unsuccessfully to shut the small casement, the
flimsy fastenings of which I had evidently smashed.  He soon abandoned
his efforts, with an oath at the storm, and re-crossed the room.  But I
could now hear what passed, and, as he did not think to rearrange the
curtain, I could see everything clearly.

For a time not a word was spoken, and then Livenza broke the silence.

"We may as well end this pretence, Sarita.  I have lied to you.  Your
Englishman is not coming here, he is lying snug, safely caged in a gaol
in Madrid, and I have brought you here for my own purposes.  To tell you
again what you once used to let me tell you freely, and what you know
well enough—that I love you; love you, do you hear, as no cold-blooded
English dog knows how to love.  You are mine now, and shall never belong
to another."

I saw Sarita start, and wince at the words.  She looked across at him,
and appeared to realise in a moment the extremity of the case, her
imminent peril, and his wild insanity.  She hesitated as if calculating
her chance of either outwitting or struggling against him; and I would
have given anything to have been able to let her know I was at hand.
The dead calmness of her tone, as she replied, told me how clearly she
understood her danger.

"I have never let you tell me that, Colonel Livenza," she said, very
quietly.

"But you knew it.  You could read it in my eyes, in my acts, in how I
served you, in my work for the Carlists, in everything," he answered,
vehemently. "You are more to me than life—you know that.  Life, do I
say"—and he laughed—"Why, I have wrecked my very soul for your love,
Sarita; and have within the last few hours done murder that you might be
free to be mine."

"What do you mean?" she asked, in the same clear, cool, even voice.  She
was leading him to talk in order to gain time to think and plan.

"What should I mean but that I have killed the only man who stood
between us.  No, not your Englishman," he cried bitterly, in answer to
her changing look.  "He never stood between us.  A far stronger than
he—Quesada.  You told me of his treachery.  He gave you to me, and all
the time was scheming and lying that he might cheat me of you and have
you for himself.  But he will lie and cheat no more;" and he laughed
again, wildly and recklessly.  "Unless he does it in hell.  He is dead,
do you understand, dead, shot through the brain at the very moment when
he was setting another cursed trap for me."

I saw Sarita start in fear, then instantly recover herself.

"You did wrong to kill him," she said, quietly.

"Wrong?  Is revenge wrong?  Is justice wrong? Has he killed no one?  Did
he not plan my murder? Wouldn’t he have ruined you?  Were you safe in
his greedy clutch?  Why chatter of wrong?  It was right; a sound, good,
true, just act, and had he a hundred lives I would take them all, the
hundredth more cheerfully than the first—for your sake, Sarita.  God,
how I love you!" he cried with mad ecstasy.  "When you told me that
night at Calvarro’s farm how he had cheated me, you signed his death
warrant, Sarita.  I went away meaning to kill him and then myself, but I
saw how to do better.  When I taxed him with his treachery he denied
everything, and made me more smooth promises.  He was afraid to die and
told me where you were, that I could go to you and rescue you, and have
you for my own, all my own, Sarita.  And then I saw what I could do.
That I could still kill him, and then escape myself to you and win you;
and I went out from his room and crept out to the back of his house and
caught him—doing, what think you?  In the very act of sending a message
to his spies to arrest me at the place to which he was sending me to
find you. I knew then he had told me the truth, where you were; and I
shot him and saw him fall dead without a word, without a groan even, and
I hurried away to you.  To you, my love, my last hope in life, my love,
my love. God, how I burn for you!" he exclaimed with fresh ecstasy.

Sarita shuddered and drew in her breath, at these evident proofs of his
madness.

"You told me Lord Glisfoyle was waiting for me," she said, scarce
knowing in her growing alarm what to say.

"Don’t speak that name to me," he cried fiercely, his eyes gleaming and
his face flushing.  "Any name but that.  I lied to you, I know it.  I am
not ashamed.  A man must lie when love demands it.  I used him to win
you away from Escorias; and you came—came, never to leave me again,
Sarita.  I love you too well.  If you will not love me, you shall live
to love no other.  I swear it. But you don’t want to die, and will learn
to love me. And if you won’t, here is the love draught for us both;" and
the brute took his revolver from his pocket, and held it, looking from
it to Sarita, with eyes wild with craving, love, madness, and the menace
of death.

"You mean you will murder me as you have murdered Sebastian Quesada?"
Her voice was perfectly calm as she spoke.  No higher proof of her
consummate courage could she have shown than this exclusion of fear from
her voice.  And she smiled and added gently, "I don’t think you would do
that."  But even as she spoke she glanced hurriedly at the broken window
in the hope of escape.

I stole away then without waiting for more.  I was confident she could
hold him in check long enough for me to effect her rescue if only I
could get into the house without arousing his suspicions.

I tried the door again, but it was too firmly fastened for me to force
it, and feeling my way by the walls I went round to the back, thinking
to find there a door or window by which I could enter.  But the back
door was as firm as that in the front, and I had seen too much not to
know that the crash of my entrance, if I burst it in, would be the
signal for him to shoot.

There was a small window on the floor level, but this was not made to
open, and I was afraid to smash the glass.  In the storey above there
was also a window, and to my intense satisfaction, I saw the casement
was open and creaking in the wind.  In a moment I had my plan.  I ran to
my horse and led him to the back of the house, making a circuit
sufficiently wide to prevent his steps being heard, and fastening him
under the window I quieted him while I stood up in the saddle. I was
still some way below the window, but calculating the distance as best I
could in the dark, I sprang up and managed to catch hold of the sill.
The rest was easy.  I drew myself up, and in a minute was inside the
room.

Then I slipped off my boots, and striking a light found my way out of
the room and down the narrow rickety stairs, pausing at almost every
step, in fear lest the creak of the boards should give notice of my
presence.  But no one heard me, and as the floor at the bottom was stone
paved, I could move with greater freedom.  All was still well with
Sarita, and when I reached the door of the room where the two were, I
heard her voice, still calm and firm with courage, as she reasoned with
Livenza.

"Love is sweet and life is sweet," I heard him say in answer to
something from her; "but death is sweeter than all if love be denied.
If we cannot live and love we can die together, Sarita," he said, in the
dreary tone of a crazed dreamer.

I ran my fingers softly and noiselessly round the door in search of the
fastening, and when he began to speak again, I lifted the latch
noiselessly by imperceptible degrees, and found to my inexpressible
relief that it was unlocked.  The sands of my patience had now run out,
and I drew my revolver and held it in readiness for instant use.  The
seconds that followed formed a pause of acute suspense.  I could hear
Livenza brushing against the door on the inside as he moved when
speaking, and taking advantage of a moment when he was in the midst of
one of his mad rhapsodical harangues, I nerved myself for a tremendous
effort, thrust the door open with all my might and main, and dashed into
the room.

Thank heaven, the attempt was entirely successful. The door in opening
struck Livenza with such sudden violence, that it sent him staggering
forward against the table in the centre, overthrowing the candle and
extinguishing it.  Before he could recover himself, I had found him in
the dark, and grappling him dragged him to the floor, where he writhed
and strained in a fierce and desperate struggle for the mastery.

Sarita cried out in fear at the darkness and the sudden confusion.

"It is I, Sarita," I called, as I heard her close over us, and feared he
would try to escape.  "For God’s sake, get some kind of light."  I could
speak no more, having to concentrate every effort to overcome Livenza,
who was fighting and wrestling with the wild ferocity of madness.  So
fiercely did he struggle, and with strength which his madness increased
so greatly, that at one time I half feared he would master me; but at
length my grip fastened on his throat, and I pressed on it with all the
strength at my command, disregarding the blows he rained upon me with
frantic violence, and I hung on with a grip which he tried vainly to
shake off, writhing, and twisting incessantly.  His strength gave out at
last; the blows grew fainter and the struggles weaker until he lay
passive, choking, and seemingly unconscious in my grasp.

[Illustration: "I HUNG ON WITH A GRIP WHICH HE TRIED VAINLY TO SHAKE
OFF."—_Page_ 411.]

"Can’t you get a light, Sarita?" I asked, anxiously, for the whole
struggle had taken place in pitchy darkness.

"Are you hurt?" was her reply, her voice trembling.

"Not in the least.  Don’t be a bit afraid, we’ll soon be out of this
mess."  Finding that Livenza lay still, I plunged my hand into my pocket
and found my match-box.  "Here are matches;" and when our fingers
touched in the dark hers were cold and shaking violently.  I pressed
them gently and whispered: "It’s all right now, sweetheart;" and a
moment or two later, the candle was found and re-lighted, revealing by
its dim flame a scene of confusion and disorder in the humble little
room which bore eloquent testimony to the scene which had just been
enacted.

"You must hunt about and find something to tie this mad devil up with; I
daren’t leave him," I said next; and taking the candle she went out of
the room, her face dead white, and her hands shaking so that the candle
flickered unsteadily.

Meanwhile Livenza lay so still in the darkness that I began to fear he
was dead.  I could feel no pulse in his listless wrist, which dropped
when I released it like the arm of a corpse.  I unfastened his coat and
laid my hand on his heart, and then I could just detect a faint
fluttering; but it was enough to prove he still lived.

After a few minutes Sarita came back carrying a small length of cord
which she had found; and with this I fastened his legs.  Taking the
candle I looked with a good deal of anxiety into his eyes; and sending
Sarita for water I dashed it on his face, and made such crude efforts as
I knew of to bring him back to consciousness.  For a long time the
effort seemed vain, and the apparent difficulty of restoring him, led me
to an act of carelessness that came within an ace of proving fatal to
everything.

Sarita had been carrying Livenza’s revolver which had fallen close to
her feet when I had burst in, and now she picked up mine and laid them
both on the table; and I, thinking that Livenza would be better if I
raised him, dragged him up and set him on a chair close to them.  It was
the act of a fool.  He had evidently been duping me for some time, and
now he waited until my hands were off him, when he seized his chance
with the cunning of a madman, and snatched up one of the revolvers.  A
cry from Sarita was my first hint of the peril, and I turned to find the
barrel levelled point blank at me.

Her cry came just as he was pulling the trigger and he started and
missed me.  Quick as thought he turned on her as she moved to the other
side of the room; but his hand was too shaky for him to aim correctly,
and by the mercy of Providence he missed her.  Then before I could
interfere to stop him, for the three shots followed in rapid succession,
he put the pistol to his own temple and fired.  This time the aim was
true enough, and with a groan, he fell back off the chair dead.

The revolver dropped close to him, and I kicked it away and bent over
him, and laid my hand on his heart.

"He is dead, Sarita," I said, and rose to take her out of the room, but
the strain and the shock had been too much for her strength.  She had
fainted and lay white, wan, and helpless in the chair on which she had
crouched when he made his last desperate attempt to shoot her.

                            *CHAPTER XXXIV*

                           *A KING’S RIDDLE*

The effects of Sebastian Quesada’s death were national and dramatic.

For some days the political atmosphere was highly charged with
electricity; the utmost confusion appeared to prevail, and in the result
the war party emerged triumphant and irresistible.  Scarcely a voice was
to be heard in favour of peace, even from those who had previously been
staunch adherents of the dead Minister.

The reason of this was to some extent a matter of conjecture on my part.
How wide-reaching Quesada’s conspiracy had been I never learnt
precisely; but enough was told to enable me to guess a great deal more.
Quite suddenly, and much to my surprise, the policy of a general amnesty
for the Carlists embroiled in the recent outbreak found wide and most
influential support.

The avowed reason for this was the obvious expediency of uniting all
classes in Spain, in order to present a compact front to the common
enemy; but I believe the real reason was a very different one.  I have
grounds for saying that the scrutiny of Quesada’s private affairs and
papers revealed the fact that so many of the prominent men in the
country had been more or less involved in his movement to establish a
Republic, that the loyalists were afraid of the results of a strict
investigation and rigorous prosecution.  The war policy was a good
rallying cry, and in view of it the hatchet was to be buried.

This unexpected development was of course all in my favour, although
there were some days of acute anxiety and suspense.

So soon as I was in possession of the needed proofs that Quesada’s death
was due to murder from private motives and was not an assassination in
any way concerning the Carlists, I had been confident enough of ultimate
success to take Sarita back to Madrid, place her again with Madame
Chansette, and then open up communications with the Duke of Novarro.

From my first interview with him I brought away a piece of sorrowful
news for Sarita.  Her brother was dead.  He had been shot at Daroca in
the act of escaping from the police who had arrested him.  Her grief was
very deep, but Ramon’s death severed the family tie which bound her to
Spain; and when the first pangs of sorrow had passed, it came to be
accepted between us that if the amnesty for the Carlists was secured she
would go with us to England.

Then, just as matters appeared to be going well, an unexpected thing
occurred.  I had received a summons to attend at the Palace one day, and
went down to tell the others, and as I entered Mrs. Curwen’s room I
heard her say:

"I’m glad the tornado’s over, Mercy.  It’s a blessing we shall all go
back safe and sound to England.  Your brother’s a regular storm-centre."

"I think the storm-centre is moving at last, and across the Atlantic, as
the weather people say, Mrs. Curwen," I said, referring to the war news.

"Ah, did you hear me, Lord Glisfoyle; but you seem to be the
storm-centre.  Have you brought any more little volcanoes or blizzards
with you now?  I shall always think of a cyclone when I think of you,"
she declared, laughing.

"I am summoned to the Palace this afternoon, and hope, with you, to find
the tornado is over."

"Have you any news of Sarita’s matters then?"

"None, but I expect to hear everything this afternoon. Did you see
Dolores Quesada this morning, Mercy?"

"Yes, poor girl; she is awfully broken by her trouble, and holds to her
intention to take the veil.  She is going to-day to the Convent of the
Sacred Heart."

"About the best place for her, poor soul!" exclaimed Mrs. Curwen, "for a
time, of course.  I’m not surprised there are plenty of convents in this
most cut-and-thrust country.  I should go into one if I were a
Spaniard—which, thank goodness, I am not!"

"I think she would have done better to accept Madame Chansette’s offer
to go and live with her in Paris," said I.  "She’s too pretty, too
young, and too rich to be shut up for life."

"Madame Chansette was with me this morning, and we both tried to
persuade her," replied Mercy, "but she wouldn’t listen to us.  We hope
she will come round.  Madame Chansette says she will have at least a
year of the novitiate, and a good many things may happen in a year."

"A good many may happen in a week in Madrid," cried Mrs. Curwen.  "It
must be in the air, I suppose."

"Yes, friendships ripen quickly here, even when people are not Spanish,"
said I.

"And feelings stronger than friendship, too," retorted the widow,
understanding my reference.

"Yes, feelings stronger than friendship," I repeated, with a significant
accent and glance at her.  At that moment, Mayhew came in and I added,
"And here’s a friend, I hope."

She smiled, and turned to greet him.

"Well, what news?" she asked, a little eagerly, I thought.

"I’ve got the leave," he answered.

I looked a question at them both, and Mayhew answered it, with a
self-conscious smile of forced indifference.  "I’m going for a week or
two to London, Ferdinand.  I’ve been a bit overdoing it here."

"Overdoing what, Silas?"

"Work, of course; and as you’re all going——"

"It’s my doing, Lord Glisfoyle," said Mrs. Curwen. "I hate travelling
without someone to look after things; and when we do go I know you will
be too much occupied under the circumstances to attend to us, so I told
Mr. Mayhew he ought to get leave and come with us."

"I hope with all my heart he’ll never come back," I said, very
earnestly; and Mercy smiled.

"Not come back?  Why?" he asked.

"Because I hope you’ll find a sphere in London that will keep you
there."

"My dear fellow, a mill-horse like me has no influence."

"What leave will you have?"

"A month."

"Ah, well, one can say of London what Mrs. Curwen said just now of
Madrid; a good many things may happen in a month, and many good things
too."  And in that case the generalism was a prophecy, for Mayhew did
not return to Madrid except when he and Mrs. Curwen paid a flying
honeymoon visit there some months afterwards.

"Certainly many things have happened here," he replied, drily.

"And the catalogue isn’t filled yet; but I’m going to the Palace to-day,
and hope to get the remaining items, so far as I’m concerned;" and we
were discussing and canvassing my visit to the King, when Madame
Chansette arrived, and told us to my infinite consternation that Sarita
had been again arrested.  I could not at first believe it.

"Arrested?  My dear madame, are you sure?" I cried.

"I never feel sure of anything now; but if two officials in uniform
arriving with a warrant or a summons or some kind of paper from
Government, and the hurrying off of Sarita to some place no one knew
where, or at least would tell me where, and taking no denial or excuse
and not letting us communicate with anyone, and not even allowing Sarita
to make any decent preparations, or even pack a hand-bag with absolute
necessaries, not even a brush and comb or a spare handkerchief, and
saying no more to me than that they had their orders and must obey them,
don’t mean arrest, then what can it mean?"  She paused for want of
breath, and was plunging into another sea of words when I interrupted
her.

"Who signed the paper or warrant or whatever it was?  What was the
charge?"

"My dear Lord Glisfoyle, however can I know when I was not even allowed
to look at it, much less take it in my hands; and I was so agitated and
frightened, I could not even think coolly.  It was in this way——"

"Excuse me, I’ll go and see about it," I broke in, and hurried away to
the Duke of Novarro in search of some explanation.  I had to wait for
him, and sat for an hour or more drumming my heels on the floor and
controlling my impatience as best I could.  It was close to the time of
my interview at the Palace when he arrived, full of suave apologies for
the delay.

"I learn that Senorita Castelar has been arrested. May I ask the reason
for so unexpected a step?" I asked, getting at once to the point.

"I am very glad you have come to me, Lord Glisfoyle, although in this
matter I fear I cannot give you much satisfactory information.  But I
have just completed another affair that you will be interested to learn
concerning Senorita Castelar."

"But this arrest, my lord?" I cried, impatiently, irritated rather than
appeased by the scrupulous courtesy of his tone.

"Yes, it is undoubtedly singular; but bear with me a moment.  The other
matter is also much in point.  It concerns the young lady’s property,
Lord Glisfoyle. An examination of the Quesada papers has convinced us——"

"But the arrest, my lord?" I interposed.  "I am burning with
impatience."

"This may be in some way connected with it.  We are convinced that
Quesada was wrongfully withholding from his two relations property which
was theirs by right, and it will be restored to Senorita Castelar, of
course, if this matter is satisfactorily arranged."

"But the arrest, my lord?" I cried for the third time.  "Other matters
are nothing compared with this."

"And unfortunately I can tell you nothing about it. I cannot think it is
of any serious importance, however."

"But she has been arrested," I urged, insistently. "Such a drastic step
must mean something—even in Spain."

"You are severe upon our methods, senor.  I wish I could give you a more
satisfying answer."  And he threw up his hands and smiled.

"To whom can I go for information?" I asked, rising.

"I believe the step has been taken at the instance of the Palace; but it
cannot be serious, as I say, for we have definitely settled upon the
amnesty for all but a very few of the Carlists—where, for instance, it
is clear that robbery rather than politics was the motive."

"This does not satisfy me," I said, ungraciously; for the mention of
exceptions made me uneasy.

"I can understand that it should not; but if I may offer a word of
advice, I would counsel patience.  All will come right, I hope and
think.  Have you not received a summons to the Palace to-day?"

"Yes.  Shall I learn the truth there?" I said bluntly.

"I hope will have no difficulty in learning the truth anywhere in Spain,
Lord Glisfoyle," he answered; and the rebuke was none the less telling
because of the quiet, courteous tone in which it was administered.

"I beg your pardon, my lord.  In my great anxiety I spoke in haste."

"I am sure of that.  At the Palace I am convinced you will at least get
an explanation;" and he smiled. There was clearly nothing more to be
gleaned from him, and in this condition of anxious unrest I went to the
Palace.

I was ushered not into any of the public chambers, but into one of the
private apartments of the Royal Family, and left there alone, much
exercised in mind on account of the strange step which had been taken.

Presently the young King came to me, and I was at once struck by his
strange manner and the strange expression on his face.  He appeared to
be very glad to see me, and yet his manner was unquestionably marked by
restraint.  At first he came gladly and quickly towards me with
outstretched hands, as he had before, but checked himself, gave me his
hand to kiss, and then searched my face with precocious shrewdness,
mingled, as it seemed, with intentionally suppressed friendliness and a
dash of furtive concern.  When he spoke it was with a gravity far beyond
his years, and without any of his spontaneous boyish frankness.

"I have desired to see you alone, my lord.  The Duke of Novarro will
have told you of the decision in regard to the amnesty?"

"He has just done so, your Majesty.  I went to him to ask the reason of