"Some one to see you, Miss Ellie," he announced, and disappeared abruptly before I could ask who.

I went in, fearing it would prove to be some girl whom I did not know well, who had called out of mere curiosity. I was surprised to find, awaiting me in the hall, a person whom I did not know at all--whom I had never even seen before. It was a half-grown shuffling Mexican, with a blank and stupid face, looking as if he might be some one's stable-boy. But as soon as he saw me, he produced from some pocket and presented to me with remarkable swiftness and dexterity, a small immaculate white note. It was addressed to me, and the writing was not Estrella Mendez's small copper-plate script, but a larger, bolder, more dashing hand, scarcely like a woman's.

"To the Senorita Elenora:" it began,--and I wondered whether it could be from one of mother's old friends, for she had had several among the great Spanish families of the north. "I am asking if you will honor me with your presence for a short hour this morning," the letter ran. "It is impossible that I come to you, for I am ill. But there is a very great reason why I must see you. It is a matter touching justice. You will not fail." It was signed "Carlotta Valencia."

I read the signature twice over, and then the letter. No, my eyes were not playing tricks. But still, could it be some practical joke? I put the envelope to my face. Ah, it was she, it was the perfume of that flower! She had really written; she had summoned me.

The very fact that she had communicated with me, this being who was not as I was, whose life seemed as irrevocably separated from mine, as if she inhabited another planet, was amazing. And as for those expressions in her letter, "a very great matter," "touching justice," I dared not think what I wanted to believe.

I carried the note out into the garden. "I don't know how to answer this," I said, handing it to Mr. Dingley.

He read it, and whistled. "Well!" he said; and then, "there's one thing sure; you will not go alone!"

"Why, you don't mean to say I'm to go!" I cried.

He looked inquiringly. "Why not?"

"Oh, but father doesn't even like me to speak her name."

Mr. Dingley coughed. "Quite right, quite right! That is, of course, under ordinary circ.u.mstances. But in affairs of this sort, where state's evidence is concerned, we are obliged to lay personal feeling aside. Now from this letter," and Mr. Dingley tapped the little sheet which he held before him, "I gather that the Senora Valencia may have some information concerning this case of ours now going forward. Of course if it's incriminating, the state must have it. On the other hand, if it should tend to exonerate the defendant, of course we shall be very glad."

I murmured, "Oh, yes!" The hope of a possible means of clearing Johnny Montgomery went flushing through me.

If the Spanish Woman had anything to say I knew it would be in his favor. Still, there was something strange about it. "But if she has this information," I asked, "why doesn't she tell it in the court?"

"My dear Miss Ellie, why indeed? We never know why women do things.

But it has been my experience in legal cases, and especially in criminal ones, that women will often give evidence in some such high-fantastic way as this, which could never be got out of them through the proper channel,--that is by means of cross-examination, in court. Now she's evidently taken a fancy to tell you something, and I feel it is our duty to see just how much is in it."

"Oh, yes," I said again, but this time more faintly, for when I thought of whom I was to face, some cowardly thing in me wavered, "But are you sure it's--safe?"

Mr. Dingley laughed. "My dear Miss Ellie, we don't live in the dark ages!"

He made me feel ashamed of my hesitations. I went back into the hall, told the Mexican in Spanish, yes, that I would come quickly. He seemed satisfied with this verbal message, and I watched him shuffle down the steps, in spite of his loose-hung gait, with admirable quickness. Then I told Lee that I was going out; dinner at half-past two, all as simply and usually as if I had been intending merely to stroll over to the beach. But there the usualness of things ended.

Mr. Dingley did not at all take the way I expected, the most direct and open way by the broad easy streets, where at this hour of Sunday the church-goers were promenading; but we went roundabout, through unexpected short cuts, and then across the empty stretches of the sand-lots toward where the long gray facade of the convent stretched; and close beside it the high fence with the latticed top which surrounded the Spanish Woman's house. Above the fence the roof and the small windows beneath the eaves were just visible. As we drew near my heart beat quickly, and still I felt that, as when I was a child, I was only going to pa.s.s it. But we turned, and I realized I was actually stopping at the gate.

This was so high it was merely a door cut in the fence, allowing no glimpse of what was within, and instead of immediately opening it, Mr.

Dingley rapped upon it with the iron knocker, whose lion head had been wont to snarl at me years ago. I heard a sharp clicking as of something being unlocked, and the gate opened. But after we were inside I got an uncanny shock, for excepting ourselves there was not a soul to be seen.

"Clever contrivance that," said Mr. Dingley, glancing up. And then I noticed a wire which ran from the fastening of the gate to its top, and from there in a straight line to the house. But even this discovery didn't remove my uneasy sense of being in an enchantment.

Around us were weedy gra.s.s plots, bushes smothering in vines, broken flower urns, a dry and weather-stained fountain; and to and fro across the neglect of it all moved the shadows of the restless eucalyptus trees. A brick path, very mossy and giving uncertain foothold, ran straight to the front of the house--a blank-looking facade, all the shutters closed over the windows, and a deeply hooded door.

Mr. Dingley gave the bell handle a vigorous pull, but not the faintest tinkle reechoed through the interior. We waited. There wasn't a sound of any one inside approaching through the hall. I was fully prepared to be admitted by the same unseen agency that had moved the gate. But when, quite suddenly, the door opened, I was aware of a figure, very dimly seen in the gloom of the hall. We were allowed to enter without a question, without a word; and as quickly the door closed upon us.

After the broad sunlight the hall seemed so dark, I could but sense high ceilings and hanging draperies above my head, and feel beneath my feet the soft depth of a carpet. All that my eyes could distinguish was the little white glimmer of Mr. Dingley's card as he handed it to the person who had opened the door.

We were led through several rooms; but either they were interior rooms without windows, or else the windows were closely m.u.f.fled, for they were so dark I could hardly find my way. But when at last our conductor drew back a curtain, a tempered light streamed upon us, and showed me that the cornices of the anteroom where we were standing were gilded, that the carpet which I was crushing under my feet, was the color of wine, and every fold of the velvet curtain where it took the light like a ruby. The servant, holding it back, was a strange creature, with a tightly closed mouth, and eyes that looked as if he kept them open only a crack to see out of, but not on any account to let any one peep in. He waved at the room in front of us, and then, still silent as an apparition, returned, disappearing into the gloom through which we had come, carrying Mr. Dingley's card with him. I followed Mr. Dingley into the great apartment, which I thought must be the _sala_ of the house, and sat down in the midst of its magnificence.

It was in strange contrast to the neglect of the garden without; and to my eyes it was novel in character. There were dark portraits in old gold frames on the wall; curtains shutting out all light, but the faintest and most colored; mirrors multiplying the tapestries and marble statues, and seeming to extend the very walls of the room itself. I kept catching glimpses of figures standing in these delusive vistas, and then, with a start, realizing they were but myself.

Presently the servant returned. I saw multiple images of him advancing upon me from all sides as if to surround me. They flitted, disappeared, and the real presence bowed.

"The Senora wishes to say she is too ill to descend to the _sala_.

Will the Senorita graciously come up-stairs?"

Mr. Dingley turned to me. "That's about as I expected. Then I will wait for you here."

Involuntarily I took hold of his coat, "But you said I shouldn't go alone!"

"Oh, of course, of course," he smiled. "I meant I'd come with you to the house. That's one matter. But to go up-stairs, that's hardly possible! Don't you see, Miss Ellie," he lowered his voice, "it's quite probable this is just a ruse to get rid of me? She would hardly want to speak before a third party."

The reminder that the Spanish Woman was going to speak, and the probability of what that speech might mean was enough to make me relinquish Mr. Dingley's coat, and send me in the wake of the serving-man with almost a light heart.

He led me out of the _sala_, not by the curtained way through which we had come, but by a door opening on a little entry, and from that up a stair, which was not at all like the stairway I had seen in the large entrance hall. I had never been in a house so bewilderingly built. I followed down halls that dwindled into pa.s.sageways and so quickly did my guide move, so far he kept in front of me that even when my blue bow dropped from my hair pat upon the floor I dared not stoop to pick it up for fear of losing sight of him. I kept on ascending unexpected little steps; entered doors that opened abruptly as panels in the wall, branched off into yet narrower halls, and finally was ushered into what seemed a sort of anteroom, with only a few chairs furnishing it, and a great extent of polished floor stretching out in front of me to a curtain which hung across one whole side of it. There was a sweet though rather close odor, which wrought powerfully upon my imagination.

Walking cautiously, since the floor seemed as slippery as gla.s.s, I followed my conductor. He drew the curtain aside a little--enough to let me slip through--said something in Spanish, some one musical word which I did not understand, and the curtain closed behind me. I stood there feeling like a doll, absurd, small and lost.

I was aware of a greater sense of air and sun than I had had since I entered the house, of a farther extent of that shining floor, broken by great opaque oblongs which absorbed light and gave out colors beautiful and dim; of a uniform even interplay of color upon all sides of me, as if the walls were hung with tapestry of one pattern; but all I was really intensely conscious of was a seated figure. She was sitting almost profile to me, with her back to the light, which fell splendidly upon the full length of her hair, hanging quite to the floor. She was wrapped in something silk, of two shifting colors, green and copper, uncovering the neck and leaving a most beautiful arm bare to the shoulder. A maid was brushing her hair, bending low with each measured stroke. At my appearance she straightened, stopped, and stepped back.

It looked really as if she sank away into the shadow; and the Spanish Woman rose and came toward me, holding out her hand. The colors in her gown seemed fairly alive, and whether it was really a woven pattern of copper serpents rushing through green water, or only an accident of my fancy and the twisted lights, I couldn't determine. But, looking in her face, I thought, "Oh, surely Mr. Dingley is right. It isn't that she is ill, but only that she wants to talk with me alone." Like her hand, her voice was soft and warm.

"You are very kind," she said. There was hardly a trace of accent in her speech, only a delicate precision that made it delightful. "You see, I have been sick, and am yet too weak to go out upon the street.

It is why I have given you the trouble to come to me." And still keeping my hand she led me to a chair and gently, prettily pushed me into it. There was something persuasive in her very touch. Then, taking her seat again, "Maria, _p.r.o.ndo_!" she cried; and the maid coming forward gathered up the ma.s.s of hair, twisted it deftly into a sort of crown around her head, filling it with gold-colored hair-pins, tucked into its coil a single tuberose; then collecting the combs and brushes went softly out of the room.

The Spanish Woman sat there, resting her chin in her hand, looking at me with a pleasant rather smiling expression; and I thought she was a great deal less overwhelming than I had expected, though she was even more beautiful. "You have seen Mr. Montgomery?" she began. I thought it was only a question in form.

I said, "Oh, yes, I first saw him several years ago, dancing at a ball."

She gave me a keen glance. "Yes, and later than that?"

"Then, then," I stammered, for I was at a loss to know whether she knew what my evidence was to be, "then once or twice on the street, and yesterday in court."

"Well, and what do you think of him?"

"Why I--I don't know him."

She made an amused little sound in her throat. "Yet you have seen him three times. Once would have been enough. Surely you can tell me at least one thing--do you think he looks like a murderer?"

"Oh, no!" I murmured.

Her eyes never left me. "But you do not think well of him; he is perhaps repulsive to you?"

"Oh, no!" I whispered. There was a painful tightness around my heart, and my head felt on fire. It was not the Spanish Woman but I who seemed to be telling the story.

She gave a quick nod, as if my answers thus far had satisfied her.

"You do not believe him to be a murderer, you do not even think him unpleasant, and yet you will go into the court and swear away his freedom--perhaps his life?"

"I said I thought he did not look like a murderer," I desperately insisted, "but I can't help--"

"I know, my child, just what you are going to say," she interrupted.

"You are going to say the words they have taught you--that it is your duty, and all that! And do you not know that the law is just a great machine of rules, and that this is one of them: that you must tell whatever you have seen, no matter how unjust, no matter what harm it does? It is for that reason I do not go to the law. I come to you, who are a woman like me, and have compa.s.sion. You say you do not know this man, but you have seen him. You can not be quite blind to what he is. He has been rash and foolish, and it is true that he has made angry some very virtuous citizens"--she rolled out the last two words with a curl of her handsome lip--"but he is a most lovable and charming boy, and the most brave! Can't you see by his face that he could not do an evil thing? He was dragged into this affair as a matter of honor; the quarrel was a fair and open one."