The General set down his gla.s.s, and a queer light came into his eyes, usually so smiling and pleasant.

'Ah! Then you are right, my friend. Tell us your story as quickly as possible.'

'It appears,' said Concha, 'that there has been in progress for many months a plot to a.s.sa.s.sinate the Queen Regent and to seize the person of the little Queen, expelling her from Spain, and bringing in, not Don Carlos, who is a spent firework, but a Republic--a more dangerous firework, that usually bursts in the hands of those that light it. This plot has been finally put into shape by a letter--'

He paused, tapped on the table with his bony fingers, and glanced at Estella.

'A letter which has been going the round of all the malcontents in the Peninsula. Each faction-leader, to show that he has read it and agrees to obey its commands, initials the letter. It has then been returned to an intermediary, who sends it to the next--never by post, because the post is watched--always by hand, and usually by the hand of a person innocent of its contents.'

'Yes,' murmured the General absently, and there was a queer little smile on Estella's lips.

'To think,' cried Concha, with a sudden fire less surprising in Spain than in England, 'to think that we have all seen it--have touched it! Name of a saint! I had it under my hand in the hotel at Algeciras, and I left it on the table. And now it has been the round, and all the initials are placed upon it, and it is for to- morrow night.'

'Where have you learnt this?' asked the General in a voice that made Estella look at him. She had never seen him as his enemies had seen him, and even they confessed that he was always visible enough in action. Perhaps there was another man behind the personality of this deprecating, pleasant-spoken little sybarite--a man who only appeared (oh rara avis!) when he was wanted.

'No matter,' replied Concha, in a voice as hard and sharp.

'No; after all, it is of no matter, so long as your information is reliable.'

'You may stake your life on that,' said Concha, and remembered the words ever after. 'It has been decided to make this journey from Seville to Madrid the opportunity of a.s.sa.s.sinating the Queen Regent.'

'It will not be the first time they have tried,' put in the General.

'No. But this time they will succeed, and it is to be here--to- morrow night--in Toledo. After the Queen Regent's death, and in the confusion that will supervene, the little Queen will disappear, and then upon the rubbish-heap will spring up the mushrooms as they did in France; and this rubbish-heap, like the other, will foul the whole air of Europe.'

He shook his head pessimistically till the long, wispy grey hair waved from side to side, and his left hand, resting on the wrist- bone on the table, made an indescribable gesture that showed a foetid air tainted by darksome growths.

There was a silence in the room broken by no outside sound but the c.h.i.n.k of champed bits as the horses stood in their traces below.

Indeed, the city of Toledo seemed strangely still this evening, and the very air had a sense of waiting in it. The priest sat and looked at his lifelong friend, his furrowed face the incarnation of cynical hopelessness. 'What is, is worst,' he seemed to say. His yellow, wise old eyes watched the quick face with the air of one who, having posed an insoluble problem, awaits with a sarcastic humour the admission of failure.

General Vincente, who had just finished his wine, wiped his moustache delicately with his table-napkin. He was thinking-- quickly, systematically, as men learn to think under fire. Perhaps, indeed, he had the thoughts half matured in his mind--as the greatest general the world has seen confessed that he ever had--that he was never taken quite by surprise. Vincente smiled as he thought: a habit he had acquired on the field, where a staff, and perhaps a whole army, took its cue from his face and read the turn of fortune there. Then he looked up straight at Estella, who was watching him.

'Can you start on a journey, now--in five minutes?' he asked.

'Yes,' she answered, rising and going towards the door.

'Have you a white mantilla among your travelling things?' he asked again.

Estella turned at the doorway and nodded. 'Yes,' she said again.

'Then take it with you, and a cloak, but no heavy luggage.'

Estella closed the door.

'You can come with us?' said the General to Concha, half command, half interrogation.

'If you wish it.'

'You may be wanted. I have a plan--a little plan,' and he gave a short laugh. 'It may succeed.'

He went to a side table, where some cold meats still stood, and, taking up a small chicken daintily with a fork, he folded it in a napkin.

'It will be Sat.u.r.day,' he said simply, 'before we have reached our journey's end, and you will be hungry. Have you a pocket?'

'Has a priest a pocket?' asked Concha, with a grim humour, and he slipped the provisions into the folds of his ca.s.sock. He was still eating a biscuit hurriedly.

'I believe you have no money?' said the General suddenly.

'I have only enough,' admitted the old man, 'to take me back to Ronda; whither, by the way, my duty calls me.'

'I think not. Your Master can spare you for a while; my mistress cannot do without you.'

At this moment Estella came back into the room ready for her journey. The girl had changed of late. Her face had lost a little roundness and had gained exceedingly in expression. Her eyes, too, were different. That change had come to them which comes to all women between the ages of twenty and thirty, quite irrespective of their state. A certain restlessness, or a quiet content, are what one usually sees in a woman's face. Estella's eyes wore that latter look, which seems to indicate a knowledge of the meaning of life and a contentment that it should be no different.

Vincente was writing at the table.

'We shall want help,' he said, without looking up. 'I am sending for a good man.'

And he smiled as he shook the small sand-castor over the paper.

'May one ask,' said Concha, 'where we are going?'

'We are going to Ciudad Real, my dear friend, since you are so curious. But we shall come back--we shall come back.'

He was writing another despatch as he spoke, and at a sign from him Estella went to the door and clapped her hands, the only method of summoning a servant in general use at that time in Spain. The call was answered by an orderly, who stood at attention in the doorway for a full five minutes while the General wrote further orders in his neat, small calligraphy. There were half a dozen letters in all--curt military despatches without preamble and without mercy.

For this soldier conducted military matters in a singularly domestic way, planning his campaigns by the fireside and bringing about the downfall of an enemy while sitting in his daughter's drawing-room.

Indeed, Estella's blotting-book bore the impress of more than one death warrant or an order as good as such, written casually on her stationery and with her pen.

'Will you have the goodness to despatch these at once?' was the message taken by the orderly to the General's aide-de-camp, and the gallopers, who were always in readiness, smiled as they heard the modest request.

'It will be pleasant to travel in the cool of the evening, provided that one guards against a chill,' said the General, making his final preparations. 'I require but a moment to speak to my faithful aide- de-camp, and then we embark.'

The moon was rising as the carriage rattled across the Bridge of Alcantara, and Larralde, taking the air between Wamba's Gate and the little fort that guards the entrance to the city, recognised the equipage as it pa.s.sed him. He saw also the outline of Concha's figure in the darkest corner of the carriage, with his back to the horses, his head bowed in meditation. Estella he saw and recognised, while two mounted attendants clattering in the rear of the carriage testified by their presence to the fact that the General had taken the road again.

'It is well,' said Larralde to himself. 'They are all going back to Ronda, and Julia will be rid of their influence. Ronda will serve as well as Toledo so far as Vincente is concerned. But I will wait to make sure that they are not losing sight of him.'

So Senor Larralde, cloaked to the eyebrows, leant gracefully against the wall, and, like many another upon the bridge after that breathless day, drank in the cool air that rose from the river.

Presently--indeed, before the sound of the distant wheels was quite lost--two hors.e.m.e.n, cloaked and provided with such light luggage as the saddle can accommodate, rode leisurely through the gateway and up the incline that makes a short cut to the great road running southward to Ciudad Real. Larralde gave a little nod of self- confidence and satisfaction, as one who, having conceived and built up a great scheme, is pleased to see each component part of it act independently, and slip into its place.

The General's first thought was for Estella's comfort, and he utilised the long hill which they had to ascend on leaving the town to make such arrangements as s.p.a.ce would allow for their common ease.

'You must sleep, my child,' he said. 'We cannot hope to reach Ciudad Real before midday to-morrow, and it is as likely as not that we shall have but a few hours' rest there.'

And Estella, who had travelled vast distances over vile roads so long as her memory went back, who had never known what it is to live in a country that is at peace, leant back in her corner and closed her eyes. Had she really been disposed to sleep, however, she could scarcely have done it, for the General's solicitude manifested itself by a hundred little devices for her greater repose. For her comfort he made Concha move.

'An old traveller like you must shift for yourself,' he said gaily.

'No need to seek shelter for an old ox,' replied Concha, moving into the other corner, where he carefully unfolded his pocket- handkerchief and laid it over his face, where his long nose, protruding, caused it to fall into fantastic folds. He clasped his hands upon his hat, which lay on his knee, and, leaning back, presently began to snore gently and regularly--a peaceful, sleep- inducing sound, and an excellent example. The General, whose sword seemed to take up half the carriage, still watched Estella, and if the air made her mantilla flutter, drew up the window with the solicitude of a lover and a maternal noiselessness. Then, with one hand on hers, and the other grasping his sword, he leant back, but did not close his eyes.