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He could find no words to thank her for such un-selfish devotion, but he pressed her to his heart again and again. He still held Mariquita's hand, and was soothing her with many endearing expressions, when La Zandunga, accompanied by Tio Pedro, returned. The lovers flew apart, abashed at being surprised.
After reading this carefully there was no doubt in Mariquita's mind that Benito's mission was directed against McKay. Her first thought was the urgency of the danger that threatened her lover; the second, an eager desire to put him on his guard. But how was she to do this? By letter? There was no time. By a trusty messenger? But whom could she send?
He turned and left the room with rapid strides, and would have dragged Manuela after him, if that young lady had not been endued with a pace neat, active, and what is sometimes called "tripping," which kept her easily alongside of the ancient man of war. Lawrence followed mechanically. Pedro, with an arm round Mariquita's waist, brought up the rear.
When he landed at Gibraltar numbers came to greet him, from the Governor himself to the Tio Pedro and the old crone his wife. Letters had already assured them of Mariquita's safety, and they wept crocodile tears of joy as they clasped her once more in their arms. They were her only relatives, and as such McKay was compelled to surrender his love to them for a time.
When Peggy was offended she invariably fell back upon Mariquita's grandiose manner, and the sting of her sharp little tongue left her victims dumb and smarting. A week after this, Mrs Saville came to pay her farewell visit before sailing for India. Mother and daughter went out for a walk in the morning, and retired to the drawing-room together for the afternoon.
The mother wore rich but dowdy black and an impossible headgear, a rather hawklike affair which appeared to have alighted by mistake on the piles of dusky hair where it was shakily balancing itself, but Mariquita's narrow blue serge was entirely modish, and her tan pumps, and sheer amber silk hose, and her impudent hat.
After this the exile invented numerous excuses to call, till Mariquita's mother finally agreed to his union with her daughter. His political disability made him out of favor with the State church, the only place in which people could be married then, but Mariquita became what in English would be called a common-law wife.
"I am nearly certain to win a commission before very long. Now that we are going to the war " "The war!" Mariquita's face turned ghastly white; she put her hand upon her heart, and was on the point of falling to the ground when McKay vaulted lightly over the fence and saved her by putting his arm round her waist.
For I knew the widow Sarmiento who was their housekeeper, and she told me how she could scarcely clasp Mariquita's hair with both hands, and that she could not comb the hair unless Maria stood up and the housekeeper mounted on a footstool, for if Maria sat down the long tresses swept the ground, and therefore became all entangled.
Seeing the tears in her eyes, he said kindly: "Well, I never thought Mariquita's marriage counted for much. Do you remember how you took her in one night when old de Rojas hid in a cloisonne vase on the verandah for cover and potted at the stars with his gun?" But in his voice she read wonder that for the first time in his life he should have found his honest mother forging a moral attitude.
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