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"It was in the very first year of Don Juan's chancellorship that there came to Valoro the son of a Grand Duke of one of the German States; what brought him there I shall never know.
She glanced, it appeared involuntarily, at the sparkling liqueur in her little glass. "My dear son's history is soon told," she said, still smiling. "He has been a Carthusian monk, a Trappist, since his youth. He never had the least inclination for the life of the world. He is the abbot of the monastery of San Juan del Monte, near Valoro."
Have you a hospital in Valoro?" The old gentleman looked at me in some surprise. "I assure you," he answered, "that we have two, as fine as any in Europe." "Then," I said, "if I may make the suggestion, I would have Lopes sent off to one." Don Juan rang the bell immediately, and when a servant answered it, he indicated the man on the couch and gave some order in Spanish to him.
It was settled that we should start from Liverpool to Monte Video, thence make our way by rail across country to our destination, Valoro, a beautiful city in the mountains of Aquazilia, in the neighbourhood of which we were told we should get splendid sport.
Well, at any rate," I continued, as the train ran into Valoro station, "we've brought the thing to its destination, and we're all safe and sound, so there's something to be thankful for!"
I could not think of allowing you to stay anywhere else in Valoro than under my roof, and I am vain enough to think that we can keep you amused during your stay." I made suitable acknowledgments for his kindness, and was wondering all the while, in my heart, under what lucky star I had been born to be located beneath the very roof with my Dolores, and that, too, at her father's invitation.
"I guess he'll chuck that when he's Don Juan's son-in-law; the old snake-charmer will never tolerate a mere bookman in his drawing-room. His blue Spanish blood would all turn green, I reckon." Thus was the humble calling of a novelist despised, even in Valoro!
"Now come, I know of course who you are, I know everybody in Valoro, and especially the members of the Carlotta Society, which is avowedly Royalist and opposed to the present Government like myself. You are a member of that Society; you are one of its leaders. I suggest to you that the so-called band of robbers who attacked the train last night were simply members of the Carlotta Society?"
"As for solving the mystery of the old lady at Bath and her casket," I wrote, "whether she is alive or dead, and why she sent me to Valoro, all, my dear Jack, are to me at the present moment as great a mystery as the reason why His Serene Highness the Duke of Rittersheim should want to shoot me at a battue down in Norfolk!
I think every one in Valoro by this time put us down as an engaged couple; especially as old Don Juan seemed a consenting party or discreetly blind to our proceedings. St. Nivel told me afterwards of a conversation he overheard between two American attachés at Donna Elvira's. "I guess," remarked the "Military" to the "Naval," "that Englishman's goin' to walk off with old d'Alta's girl."
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