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"That is the millstone that he has tied round Juanita's neck," said Sarrion, folding the paper and returning it to his pocket.
"Has he left a will?" asked Marcos. Sarrion turned and looked at him with a short laugh. He threw his cigarette away, and coming into the room, sat down in front of the small table where Marcos was still satisfying his honest and simple appetite. "I have told my story badly," he said, with a curt laugh, "and spoilt it. You have soon seen through it.
Marcos was kneeling on the pavement behind her. Sor Teresa was looking straight in front of her between the wings of her great cap. It was hard to say whether she saw Juanita, or was aware that a man was kneeling immediately behind herself, almost on the hem of her flowing black robes her own brother, Sarrion.
"What do you make of all this?" asked Sarrion, addressing himself to the Englishman, who, however, rather cleverly passed the question on to the older man with a slow, British gesture. "I make of it that they only want a little money to make Don Carlos king," said Deulin. "What is Evasio Mon doing in Madrid?" asked Sarrion.
Success in life rests upon one small gift the secret of the entry into another man's mind to discover what is passing there. The greatest general the world has known owed his success, by his own admission, to his power of guessing correctly what the enemy would do next. Many can guess, but few guess right. "She has not dated her letter," said Sarrion, at length.
If Sor Teresa should embroil herself with her confessor, as Sarrion had gracefully put it, by answering his questions, that was her affair. "I came to prevent, if I could, a great mistake." "You mean that Juanita is quite unfitted for the life into which, for the sake of his money, she is being forced or tricked." "Force has failed," replied Sor Teresa. "Juanita has spirit.
"And I need not be afraid of Señor Mon, with his gentle smile?" asked Juanita, turning on Marcos with a sudden shrewd gravity. "No." She gave a great sigh of relief and shook back her mantilla. Then she laughed and turned to Sarrion. "He always says 'yes' or 'no' and only that," she remarked confidentially to him. "But somehow it seems enough."
She knew that Sarrion must pass the bridge in a few minutes and was going to listen for him. Marcos leant forward and touched Perro who understood and was still. For a moment Juanita appeared on the balcony, stepping to the railing and back again. The shaft of light then remained half obscured by her shadow as she stood in the window.
And to look at the face of Ramon de Sarrion and of his son, the still, brown-faced Marcos de Sarrion, was to conjure up some old romance of that sun-scorched height of the Javalambre, where history dates back to centuries before Christ where assuredly some Moslem maiden in the later time must have forsaken all for love of a wild yet courteous Spanish knight of Sarrion, bequeathing to her sons through all the ages the deep, reflective eyes, the impenetrable dignity, of her race.
There was always something unexplained between these two, something to be said which made them both silent. "There is the coffee," said Marcos, "on the table. We have no time to spare." "Marcos means," explained Sarrion significantly, "that we have no time to waste." "I think he is right," said Sor Teresa.
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