Chapter XII: Book V: Isabel (1)

I

A chariot was at the guest-house door when Antonio called to enquire about Sir Percy's progress. At the horses' heads stood Jackson waiting. Rugs, portmanteaux, and a brass-clamped trunk had already been strapped in their places.

"H'llo!" sang out young Crowberry's light voice from the top of the steps. "You're the very man we were coming to see. We were coming to say good-bye."

"You and your father?"

"I and my father and Sir Percy. We're off to Lisbon. The doctor from Navares was here all yesterday afternoon. Seemed rather clever. He liked the way you'd dressed the hand; but he doesn't like Sir Percy's general health, especially his heart. So the guv'nor and I are taking him to the chief Lisbon doctor. We shall go to Oporto by sea next week--the guv'nor and I--and from there to London."

He descended the bottom step; and, after marching off Antonio by the arm to a spot out of Jackson's hearing, he added:

"Don't get the idea that I repent of helping to save the azulejos. We did the right thing. All the same, I'm not happy about it. In a sense we're to blame for Sir Percy's burnt hand. Hang it, he's a brick, after all! I couldn't stand pain like that. He doesn't give a single moan. But it isn't Sir Percy who upsets me most. It's Isabel. I said she was all head and no heart. By Jove, think of it! No heart! Yet she's hardly left his bedside these twenty-four hours. She waits on him hand and foot; and sometimes the look in her eyes is just about as much as I can stand."

"This Isabel certainly has a heart," said Antonio. "If she's unlike other people, it's because she has more heart, not less. I hope the Senhorita will not be fatigued by her journey to Lisbon."

"She isn't going."

"Not going? You don't intend to leave these ladies alone?"

"No. We're leaving them in charge of a friend. Besides, there'll be Jackson."

"The friend is a man?"

"Quite. He's a man from top to toe. His name is Francisco Manoel Oliveira da Rocha."

Before the monk could reply, they were joined by Mr. Crowberry, to whom Jackson had announced Antonio's arrival.

"You're welcome, da Rocha," he said heartily. "This will save us an hour. We were meaning to call and see you on our way to Lisbon. Teddy has told you the news. We want you to be as neighborly as you can to the ladies. It will only be for eight or nine days."

"I shall be happy to serve the Senhoras," answered Antonio.

"Happy? So you ought to be. But you don't look it. Come, damn it all, what did you tell me yourself? The worst of the year's work is over; and you said you were going to study. My advice is ... Don't. Give yourself a rest. Run up here of an evening for a bit of music or a game of cribbage."

"Or for a quiet pipe and glass with that Excellent Creature Mrs. Baxter," put in young Edward.

"Do the Senhoras approve of this?" asked Antonio.

"We didn't ask 'em," Mr. Crowberry answered. "But never fear. They'll jump at it."

"And Sir Percy?"

"He approves of you entirely. Y' see, da Rocha, I've been giving you glowing testimonials. I've said that if I were the Grand Turk himself I would trust you with the latch-key of the harem. I don't doubt though," added Mr. Crowberry, chuckling and digging at Antonio's ribs, "that you've been a bit of a dog in your time. Eh? And none the worse for it either. Still, the point is you're as steady as an old horse, now. Besides, supposing you wanted to make love to Isabel, it would be all the same. You'd simply get a frost-bite."

"I am entirely at the service of all your Excellencies," said Antonio, rather stiffly.

"Thanks," Mr. Crowberry answered. "But don't be too much at the service of Mrs. Baxter. Between ourselves, she's a selfish, lazy, avaricious old humbug. She looks the picture of good temper; but don't be taken in. Mrs. Baxter boasts that she has stuck to the Kaye-Templemans through thick and thin; but she's buttered her own bread thick all the time. She is a rich woman--all out of Sir Percy. When the ship begins to sink, Mrs. Baxter'll be the first to rat."

"Then how must I treat her?" Antonio asked.

"Simply leave her alone. She'll spend her days in bed, like a dormouse--only, dormice don't wake up every four hours to ask if it isn't feeding-time. Even while Sir Percy has been in all this pain, Mrs. Baxter has had the servants running about after her the same as usual."

"What about Jackson?"

"Oh, he'll sleep all day too. He'll find a snug corner and smoke and dose till dinner-time. But he doesn't soak. And, if there's work to do, he'll do it. Jackson's all right. But come inside."

On the threshold of the large room Isabel met them. Want of sleep had paled her cheeks and dulled her eyes; but an unwonted softness of expression made her more beautiful in the monk's view than ever before. He could not help feeling glad that she was remaining behind, and proud that she was to be in his charge. Isabel led Antonio straight to Sir Percy, who was sitting in a rocking-chair with his arm in a sling.

The baronet was more changed than his daughter. He looked weak and old; but he was no longer distraught. After he had answered Antonio's inquiries gratefully, he said:

"Senhor da Rocha, it is possible I have behaved towards you with curtness or even with downright uncouthness. If so, I ask your pardon most sincerely, and I beg you to set it all down to my preoccupation with a scheme which has failed. My daughter and I will never forget your kindness. Indeed, we are about to presume still further upon it. You know that I shall be absent a few days in Lisbon, and we are hoping that you will be so very good as to come now and then to this house."

It seemed strange to Antonio. But he reflected that the English were strange people, and that Sir Percy was far stranger than most of his compatriots. Again he reflected that neither Sir Percy nor Mr. Crowberry, in spite of their friendliness, regarded him as other than a simple farmer who would never cease to be conscious of their differences of station. Accordingly he replied:

"Far from asking me a service, your Excellency, on the contrary, is doing me a great honor. I value it so much that he may take his journey with an easy mind."

Jackson brought in two bottles of tawny port, bearing the familiar label of Castro and de Mattos. Healths were drunk all round; and although Sir Percy, Isabel and Antonio did not drink more than two full glasses between them, the bottles were quickly emptied. Farewells were said. Then Sir Percy was placed in the carriage, with Crowberry _père_ at his side. Crowberry _fils_ climbed upon the box, accompanied by the Portuguese groom, who had come with the party from Oporto. At Sir Percy's suggestion, Antonio took the vacant seat opposite Mr. Crowberry, so that he should save his legs a mile of the journey home. Before entering the carriage, however, the monk turned to Isabel and enquired:

"At what hours will my visits be least unacceptable to the Senhoras?"

"Come up this afternoon," cried Mr. Crowberry, emphatically. "It'll be to-day they'll feel loneliest, when all we noisy nuisances are gone. To-day and to-morrow."

"But you need sleep?" said Antonio to Isabel. He intended to express no more than his genuine solicitude; but his soft eyes met hers with another glance of unconscious tenderness. She colored so noticeably that he made haste to add: "So I will not come until four o'clock."

Standing on tiptoe beside the chariot Isabel gave her father a single kiss. It was plain that such outward marks of affection were not often exchanged between them, and that the public giving and taking of this one kiss meant more than a thousand kisses between less reserved beings. Even young Crowberry seemed to notice it, as though he had eyes in his back; for he cracked a whip, and the chariot lurched on its way.

At four o'clock Antonio found Mrs. Baxter waiting in state to receive him. Although the light blue silk dress into which she had packed herself for the occasion made the Excellent Creature look almost as broad as long, she was not a wholly unpleasing body. Her hair, primly parted in the middle, and drawn tightly over her temples, was still glossy and black. Her insistent smile showed white and regular teeth, and the color in her cheeks gave her a buxom and wholesome look in odd contrast with her hypochondriac complaints. She wore a very large oval brooch containing a lock of hair which, presumably, had pertained to the lamented Baxter; also gold ear-rings and a fine gold chain.

It soon became evident that Mr. Crowberry had been descanting upon Antonio's importance; for Mrs. Baxter was determined to convince the visitor of her own past greatness. She monopolized the conversation. Beginning with an account of a happy girlhood spent amidst every luxury in a part of England unnamed, she went on to speak of her rashly romantic marriage with the dashing ne'er-do-well Baxter; or her universally-envied beauty as a bride; of her tearing her veil in church, and of her coming out in a gust of rain to find a black cat sitting on the vicar's first wife's gravestone--three infallible portents of evil. Next, of the handsome, but unpractical, Baxter's prompt and inconsiderate demise; of the un-Christian obduracy of her flint-hearted father, who would neither forgive nor finance his headstrong offspring; and of the entirely diabolical behavior of the surviving Baxters.

Up to this point Isabel had sat bending over some embroidery, with an air of finding all such work distasteful; but when the Excellent Creature began putting the finishing touches to her character-sketch of the late Miss Caroline Sophia Baxter, she got up unostentatiously and went softly to the window. Mrs. Baxter did not mind, but proceeded to praise the admirable Providence which had suddenly thrown her into the path of dear Lady Kaye-Templeman. A hundred details followed, and Antonio's eye began to rove. Nor did it rove vainly; for when Mrs. Baxter explained how she and dear Lady Kaye-Templeman had grown to be practically two sisters, the monk saw the slender girl in the window tap the floor impatiently with her small foot.

"Of course, I was with her at the end," said Mrs. Baxter, mopping away tears. "How could I have been anywhere else? Her last thoughts were of her darling child. 'Clara,' she said to me, 'promise me that you will never desert my Isabel.'"

The small foot tapped more sharply.

"And I never _have_ deserted her," concluded the Excellent Creature, "although families of the highest quality and the first respectability have sought to induce me, by the most tempting offers, to enter their establishments. No, Signor, I've never deserted poor Isabel, and, until she is dead or married, I never will."

"There are clouds coming up from the Atlantic," said Isabel, turning round abruptly. "Mrs. Baxter, we must either lose the pleasure of Mr. da Rocha's company, or else let him be soaked through."

Filled with a deep dread of the dreary half-hour when, having recited her own history, she must listen to another's, Mrs. Baxter was relieved to see Antonio go. The Iberian flourishes which adorned his parting compliments completed her satisfaction. Why had no one ever spoken so nicely to her in England? She shook hands with Antonio, and very graciously pressed him to come and drink tea as soon as he should be able.

Isabel accompanied him to the top of the stone steps.

"I'm so sorry," she said.

"Sorry?"

"About Mrs. Baxter. No! Don't say anything insincere. I know as well as you do that you hated it as much as I did. I could put up with the tale when it was half truth and half white lies. But it has changed with every telling until it's nearly all jet-black fibs. My mother liked her poor friends more than her rich ones; but Mrs. Baxter was not her friend. Nor is Mrs. Baxter's name Clara. It is plain Jane."

Antonio smiled. "Anyhow, I've got it over," he said. "It had to come, some time or other. But where are your clouds that are going to drench me to the skin?"

"Over there," answered Isabel, pointing to one tiny milk-white cirrus adrift in the clear blue lake of heaven. "It's as large as a man's hand. You think I'm irreligious; but I've read the Bible, and I remember something about a cloud no bigger than a man's hand which worked some miracle."

"That little cloud delivered Israel from drought and from famine," said Antonio.

"And this little cloud has delivered you from Mrs. Baxter and from ... me," she retorted.

"It is banishing me from you," said Antonio, with prompt gallantry.

"If you wish to see me again--though I can't think why you should," she said, in as colorless a tone as she could command, "don't always come in the afternoon, or to the house. Mrs. Baxter will drive you mad. Come in the morning, to the ravine--that pretty pool with the cascade and the stepping-stones. I shall be there reading on fine days. It's a shame to pen you up in a stuffy house. Besides, you said it was your favorite spot. Mrs. Baxter is calling. Good-bye."

II

When Isabel reached the pool with the stepping-stones Antonio was already there. He could have wished that Miss Kaye-Templeman had not suggested what might look like surreptitious meetings; but, being a Portuguese gentleman as well as a monk, he could do no other than attend her at the place she had appointed.

It was a perfect morning. The sun shone more hotly and brightly than on many a day of July, making one thankful for the shade of the trees, and for the cold spray of the waterfall. Hundreds of birds were singing, and a great Japanese medlar scented the air. Yet, after half an hour or so of uneasy talk on commonplace topics, the monk turned home again with a smarting breast.

Somehow the lady gave him a feeling that he had intruded; that he had committed an indelicacy in so swiftly taking her at her word; and that he was beginning to bore her. The afternoon, before, on the top of the steps, she had seemed sorry to see him go; but, at the stepping-stones, she seemed rather to regret his having come. While her politeness was unexceptionable, their good-comradeship appeared to be at an end.

His failure to retain her favor piqued Antonio. Like many another monk before him, he had often found pleasure in the belief that, if need arose, he could hold his own as a man of the world. Nor did the pleasantness of such a belief spring altogether from sinful pride. He had sought to hallow God's name and to hasten the coming of the Kingdom by sacrificing his share of life's delights and excitements; and he naturally preferred to think that the world he had renounced was a world in which he would have triumphed, and not a world in which he would have blundered and failed. The first eventful days which followed the arrival of all these English people at the abbey had ministered so subtly to his complacency that the awakening was all the ruder. Beneath the surface of his monkish humility the natural man began to stir proudly and imperiously towards the regaining of his dominance.

The next day was Sunday. So as to save the faces of poor Magarida and her family, Antonio avoided the ten o'clock crowd and fulfilled his obligation at the seven o'clock low Mass. This was the Mass most favored of the local Saints and Blessed Ones; but although the cura and the worshipers were full of quiet devotion the monk found it hard to keep his thoughts from wandering. Nearly all the way home Isabel tripped daintily hither and thither before his mind's eyes. He soon decided that he must not present himself again either at pool or at guest-house for a day or two; but this resolution only enhanced the dreariness of his mood.

Reaching the farm about nine o'clock he was about to prepare his lonely breakfast when José appeared with a letter. It had been brought, he said, by Sir Percy's Portuguese servant, whom José proceeded to denounce as an inquisitive minx and a saucy chatterbox. Antonio broke the seal and read:

_Mrs. Baxter presents her compliments to Signor da Rocha and requests the pleasure of his company to-morrow (Sunday) afternoon, for tea. Mrs. B. trusts that Signor R. reached home yesterday before the shower._

_Saturday Evening._

Underneath Mrs. Baxter's expansive script the monk saw a few infinitesimal characters, so minute that in spite of his keen eyes he was forced to hold them up to the light. At first they looked like a wavy and broken line, about half an inch long; but he deciphered them at last. They ran:

_Do come. I. K-T._

"For instance," said José indignantly. "She asked me point-blank, plump out, whether your Worship is engaged to be married."

Antonio wheeled round so sharply that he almost let the paper fall. It took him some moments to realize that José was not quoting Isabel, but only Isabel's servant.

"I up and asked her, straight off, if she was engaged to be married herself," continued José. "And when she said No, I said, 'With a tongue like that I don't wonder at it.' Then she went home."

Antonio forced a laugh and turned back to light a couple of pine-cones on the hearth. But when José had set out for church he picked up the note again and read Isabel's message thrice over. Only nine letters; yet they harped and sang around him as if they had been the Nine Muses, and all his heaviness and dreariness fled away from their silver voices.

Later on, while he was conning his breviary under the orange-trees, the monk suddenly faced a question. It came to him as he recited the None psalm _Quomodo dilexi legem_, at the words _tota die meditatio mea est_. Could he truthfully say that his "meditation all day long" was still upon God? He examined his conscience.

The result was not unsatisfactory. After years of loneliness his mind surely needed the tonic of intercourse with minds of its own order. Mr. Crowberry and his son had certainly wrecked his plan of autumn meditation and study; but after all, these two were associated with the most crowded and stirring months of Antonio's career, and he could hardly be cool at their irruption into the quiet life of the farm. Again, the affair of the azulejos had distracted him greatly; but surely God had been the substratum of his long thinkings, and the firmament overarching them all. As for Isabel, he was spending time with her at Sir Percy's express request. That he should find delight in her society was proper and right. As a da Rocha, whose ancestors had fought against the Moors to establish the Portuguese kingdom and against the Spaniards to restore it, he naturally felt invigorated by his encounters with a gently bred and high-born damsel.

Although he was perfectly honest in all this inward searching, the monk, nevertheless, failed to push the probe right home. Isabel had been confided to his neighborly good-will, Isabel was intellectual, Isabel spoke his beloved English, Isabel was an aristocrat, like himself; therefore Isabel's temporary prominence in his thoughts was explained. It did not occur to him that Isabel was also the prettiest and daintiest girl he had ever seen, and that this fact might have some little to do with his interest in her. But he was not wholly to blame for the omission. Barely ten days had passed since his escape from Margarida, and Antonio was taking it for fully granted that he was eternally proof against girls as girls and women as women.

When José came in from church the monk translated Mrs. Baxter's note aloud, and stated that he would accept the invitation. He added that he would take care to pass the chapel, and, if possible, to collect the pieces of the two broken azulejos. The two men sat awhile in the garden smoking their Sunday cigars and saying little. José's peace of mind was evidently not being disturbed by Sir Percy's daughter as it had been disturbed by Senhor Jorge's. After his master had refused a plump, bouncing, rosy-cheeked, black-eyed heiress, all covered with gold, like Margarida, José did not fear his accepting a slender, icy, shell-pink, simply-garbed, unbejeweled stranger like Miss Kaye-Templeman. He would almost as soon have believed that Antonio was in danger of Mrs. Baxter.

The monk set out at three o'clock. Instead of taking his usual short cut up the bed of the torrent he followed the road through the great gates and the avenue of camellias to the monastery. He tried the door of the chapel; but it was locked. Deeply disappointed, he was turning away when Isabel came in sight, descending the steep path from the pool. She greeted him with more openness and friendliness than ever before.

"I've come to meet you," she added, "to save my own life. Whatever happens, don't let Mrs. Baxter know I wrote that little bit on her letter. She gave it to me to seal."

"It was wrong of you," said Antonio, with mock censoriousness.

"I know. Very wrong," she retorted. "But Mrs. Baxter began it. After her Mrs. B. and Signor R., surely there had to be a postscript. But tell me. Didn't I see you rattling the door of the chapel?"

"I hoped it might be unlocked," he said, a little awkwardly, "and I thought I might take the liberty of picking up those broken tiles. Perhaps they could be patched together and cemented back into their places."

The thought of the azulejos clouded her gaiety, and she did not dissemble an impatient pout. Antonio drew out his old-fashioned silver watch.

"Twenty-five minutes past three," he said. "We are too early for Mrs. Baxter."

"For Mrs. B., you mean," she answered, dismissing her impatience. "Very well, Signor R.; let us go and gather up the fragments."

From her embroidered bag she drew out a tiny handkerchief, a set of ivory tablets, and, last of all, a long thin key. The monk recognized it at once. It was of old Spanish work, damascened; and Antonio could not doubt that if the Fazenda official had been a less ignorant man he would have ordered a cheap duplicate, so as to keep the original for himself. Isabel drove it into the keyhole; and, a moment later, the well-hung door rolled back on its hinges and the afternoon sun filled the chapel with warm light.

They entered. Nothing had been touched since the moment of Sir Percy's accident. Without a word the monk stepped forward and began putting together the broken framework of the saw. After some hesitation Isabel joined him. Kneeling near his side she sorted out the shattered azulejos and succeeded fairly well in piecing them together.

"What shall we do with them?" she asked. "We have no cement. Besides, I am not sure that my father won't prefer to put them back himself. By the way, don't tell Mrs. Baxter what we've been doing."

"Give them to me," Antonio answered. And, having transferred them to a short plank, he carried the pieces off to his own cell and placed them in the cupboard. The damage to the two tiles was irreparable; but he resolved to puzzle out the secret of their manufacture and to make new ones in their stead.

"We can go now, can't we?" begged Isabel, when he returned to the chapel. There was a dutiful, almost daughterly, submissiveness in her manner which cooed to his pride more softly and winsomely than he knew.

"We can go," he said. "There will be time to take the path over the stepping-stones."

They relocked the chapel and mounted through the wood. Here and there its brown carpet of pine-needles was tawny with flecks and dapplings of mellow sunshine. In a patch of old garden, round an image of Saint Scholastica, they found autumn snowdrops, saffron, and sweet-smelling ranunculus. Overhead a blue gum-tree was in full flower, and all the while the wood hummed and thrilled with the diapason of the hidden torrent.

After they had crossed the stepping-stones Isabel halted, as if to absorb the loveliness of the rippling pool. Antonio remained silent, awaiting her good pleasure. Suddenly she said, without turning her eyes towards his:

"This is the place where I was so disagreeable yesterday morning."

He was too much surprised to reply.

"Isn't it?" she demanded.

"No," said Antonio. "It is the place, where, yesterday morning, we ... where we didn't get on together as well as before."

"It was all my fault," she persisted. "I had a silly fit of prudishness, like a young miss just home from school. All the time we were trying to talk I was wondering what you thought of me for asking you to meet me alone in a wood."

"English ways are different from Portuguese," suggested Antonio.

"Not so very different, after all," she said. "Ask Mrs. Baxter. Or, rather, take care that you don't say half a word to Mrs. Baxter about it. If you do she will swoon away with horror at the news of my brazen forwardness."

"If you will lend me your little ivory tablets," replied Antonio, "I shall be able to begin making notes of all the things I am not to mention before Mrs. Baxter."

"Be serious for a minute," she urged with a heightening of color. "Unless I can make you understand, we must not meet this way any more. If we mustn't, if we can't, I don't expect it will matter very much to you; but ... it will to me."

Her eyes met Antonio's. This time it was he who colored up and fell into confusion. The only reply he could think of was a stilted compliment.

"The Senhorita does me a great and an undeserved honor," he stammered.

"Don't," she commanded, with an impatient gesture. "When you talk like that I hate you. Be sincere. Besides, I'm not a Senhorita. If I were a Senhorita I should have jet-black hair and big sentimental eyes, and I should never walk more than a mile in my life, and I should no more dream of meeting you like this than of dancing on a boa-constrictor. Are you going to talk like that any more? If so, we'll go home this minute and you can do it on the way."

Antonio had met his match. If Isabel had been a man he could have met imperiousness with imperiousness, sarcasm with sarcasm, demand with demand, until he had established his will. But Isabel mastered him. He could only stand before her, like a refined and handsome José, awaiting orders.

"What you must understand is this," she said. "You have promised to come and talk to me now and then, while my father is in Lisbon. You've promised, and I want you to do it. I must talk to somebody sometimes, mustn't I? But I'd rather not have you at all than have any more times like Friday afternoon with Mrs. Baxter. You may think that, because she finished the story of her life on Friday, you've got the worst of it over; but you haven't. You've still to hear about the dear Marchioness of Witheringfield. Mrs. Baxter didn't know the dear Marchioness from Eve; but the tale will take an hour, all the same. Also, you've to hear how Mrs. Baxter lost the Baxter jewels, which she never possessed; and how she undermined her health nursing me through a month's fever, though it was really only a two-days' cold in the head; and how she rescued the little Viscount Datton from a burning house, which she never saw in her life. Don't think me spiteful. I simply can't stand it. Of course, you must put up with Mrs. Baxter once in a while; but, speaking generally, if you're coming any more to talk to me, I want you to talk to me here, at this pool, in the mornings."

"If I come here, to this pool, in the mornings," asked Antonio, who had recovered himself, "how do you know that I shan't inflict on you a string of histories as long as Mrs. Baxter's?"

Although he did not mean to fish for a compliment, his ears expected some pleasing reply; and he was a little crestfallen when she replied brusquely:

"Perhaps you will. Only don't you see, they will be histories I haven't heard fifty times already. Come to-morrow morning. Now we ought to be going. It must be close on four o'clock."

III

The next morning Isabel and Antonio conversed, to the accompaniment of the cascade's deep music, for nearly an hour. The morning following, their talk lasted eighty minutes. On the Wednesday Antonio again drank tea with Mrs. Baxter, who regaled him with the full story of the little Viscount Datton's escape from the blaze at Datton Towers; of his lordship's ingratitude and eventual marriage; and of the young Viscountess Datton's scandalous callousness when her consort broke his collar-bone in a steeple-chase. On the Friday morning the monk met Isabel again at the pool. Business took him to Villa Branca on the Saturday; but Sunday afternoon saw him striding over the stepping-stones once more.

Although these sunny hours were seasons of delight and refreshment to Antonio's human spirit, they did not parch the springs of his Christly life. Every night he continued the pious practice of self-examination; and he was able, in all honesty and reverence, to justify himself by the example of his Lord. _Diligebat Jesus Martham et sororem ejus Mariam_, "Jesus loved Martha and her sister Mary;" and, on the eve of His passion he fortified His weary spirit for the last conflict by abiding quietly in Martha's and Mary's house. And, in this sense--_diligebat not amabat_--Antonio loved Isabel. He was drawn to her by silken cords of pity for a loneliness and lovelessness far worse than his own. He loved, with a fine spiritual sympathy unwarped by earthly passion, the brave, truthful ardent soul underneath the ice of her pride. No doubt he found a sensuous pleasure in the softness of her voice, in her ever-varying beauty, and in her never-failing grace; but these charms delighted him by reason of an exquisite fitness, like the fitness of richly embroidered vestments and pure golden chalices or monstrances in great acts of spiritual worship. He loved her with a sacred and not with a profane love.

Nevertheless, the monk knew that he was only a weak mortal, and that he had drifted into a situation rife with perils. He remembered that better Christians than he had made shipwreck of their faith through yielding themselves too confidently to feminine companionship. He recalled the solemn warning of Saint Paul: "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." But, so far as his own safety was concerned, a single consideration sufficed to reassure him. In a few days Sir Percy would return, and it was almost certain that he would bid his women-folk pack their chattels and depart before the second instalment of purchase-money fell due. Within a month, perhaps within a week, Isabel would pass out of Antonio's life. Once more he would have to settle down with José to their dull and lonesome grind, and probably years would drag away before he could hear an English voice again.

Antonio, however, was not selfish enough to think only of his own salvation and perfection. The situation had its perils for Isabel as well as for himself; and therefore he followed up his monk's self-examination by meditating, as a man of the world, on Isabel's interests. Although he would miss her sorely, Antonio was prepared to surrender her, when the time came, without a murmur, as he had learned to surrender many lesser delights before; but was Isabel equally able and willing to surrender Antonio? She was young, she was lonely, she was deeply affectionate as only a reserved woman can be; so was he doing right in occupying her thoughts more and more? After striving to act like the very soul of honor towards the slow-witted and shallow Margarida, was he not in danger of behaving dishonorably towards this finely-tempered, deep-hearted lady?

These questions suddenly pressed themselves upon his conscience with so much ardor as he was crossing the stepping-stones on the second Sunday afternoon that he halted in the midst of the spray from the cascade and almost resolved to turn back. But he decided that there was no cause for alarm. In Isabel's view the difference in their stations must surely repress any rash outgoings of her maiden fancy. The da Rochas could boast a longer and a less dubitable pedigree than the Kaye-Templemans; but Antonio had perceived among the English a disrespect for all aristocracies save their own. Besides, Isabel knew not a leaf or a twig of his family tree. To her he was a self-made man, a yeoman working with his own hands. Educated, traveled, interesting, ambitious, refined he might be; but, in the social scale, he was still a yeoman before the eyes of Isabel.

No. Surely there was no peril, no need to turn back. At not one of their meetings by the pool-side had there been the slightest approach to sentimental interchanges. They had talked of a hundred matters. Portuguese, English, and universal, and Isabel had gone so far as to tell a score or two of intimate experiences from which Antonio could rebuild the gray history of her unpeaceful life. But there had been no more personal explanations, no more half-quarrels, no more uncontrolled glances or blushes, no more of anything outside the frank good-fellowship of fast friends in the first flush of friendship. So Antonio did not turn back.

Isabel appeared at last, holding out some papers. A post had arrived from Lisbon, bringing the news that Sir Percy was much better. As the burnt hand was still useless, Mr. Crowberry had written out the bulletin; and, enclosed with his letter to Isabel were two for Antonio. The first, from Crowberry _père_, contained little more than compliments and thanks; but the second, in the loose handwriting of Crowberry _fils_, was more interesting. It ran:

_Dear Joligoodfellow._

_IhopethiswillfindyouwellasitleavesmeatpresentthankGodforit._

_Now that the alujezos (or ajuzelos, or azelujos) are safe, isn't it time you took a holiday? Why not come back to England with Sir Percy and Isabel? I don't expect they'll stay in Portugal._

_I will bet a guinea that you've either quarreled with Isabel or that you haven't. When you write, don't forget to say what you really think of her._

_Give my love to that Excellent Creature Mrs. Baxter. Also to the Baxter jewels. Also to those monsters of ingratitude, inhumanity, and impiety Miss Sophia Baxter and the Viscount and Viscountess Datton. Also, if you dare, to Isabel. And accept the same yourself from_

_Your most respectful and obedient_
TEDDY CROWBERRY.

It occurred to Antonio that in neither of the letters was a date given for Sir Percy's return to the guest-house. He was on the point of asking Isabel whether it was mentioned in Mr. Crowberry's bulletin; but he saw that the question could be interpreted in an uncouth sense, and therefore he did not put it. The answer, however, was writ plain in Isabel's face. He swiftly analyzed her cheerfulness into two principal components--her thankfulness for Sir Percy's improved health and her relief at the prolongation of her liberty. Isabel's laugh was more free and gay. She seemed to be more of a girl and less of a woman. Indeed, for a few minutes, she became almost a child. For a while she stood hurling stones into the heart of the waterfall, as into the white down and iridescent feathers of a great bird's breast; and as soon as she wearied of this exercise she began to sail boats of cork-bark down the hurrying waters of the pool, scolding or encouraging her favorite as if it had been alive.

When Isabel at last sat down she demanded, with her usual abruptness:

"Why have you never told me about the Portuguese ladies--about the senhoritas? I'm tired of Dom Miguel and Dom Pedro, and Affonso Henriques and the Cardinal-King. As for growing grapes, by this time I know as much about it as you do. Talk to me about the senhoritas."

"What can I say about them," objected Antonio, "except that they are exceedingly beautiful, exceedingly virtuous, and exceedingly charming."

"And exceedingly dull," she said. "But be serious. Answer me. Is it true that Portuguese men are only half Christians? Is it true that, where women are concerned, you are out-and-out Moors? Don't you all look on women either as toys or as slaves?"

"If young Mr. Crowberry were here," retorted Antonio, "he would tell you how we tie up the ladies of our harems in sacks and drop them into the Tagus."

"I'm glad young Mr. Crowberry is hundreds of miles away," she declared. "When I've the patience to listen to him, I admit some of his satire is clever. But he bores me. I mean, he annoys me. I suppose it's because we've both got yellow hair."

"You have not got yellow hair," said Antonio.

"Never mind what sort of hair I've got. Tell me about the senhoritas. How do they spend their time?"

"Perhaps they could answer themselves--though I doubt it," he said. "People say they eat and drink and sleep; they dress and go to church; and, the rest of the time, they look out of the window."

"Is it still true," she asked, "that their ... their suitors come and stand under the windows at night, for hours at a time, with guitars?"

"Not always with guitars," explained Antonio, "but the rest is still true. If you want a senhorita you must stand under her window, night after night, for months, wet or fine. When her window is on the third floor you get a crick in the neck."

"But what do they talk about?"

"Nothing. They make eyes."

Her questions ceased, and the monk hoped that they were finished with a risky topic. Suddenly, however, she turned upon him and blurted out:

"Do you have to crick your neck for Margarida?"

Antonio jumped. The question struck him entirely dumb. Margarida! At first he could only stare at the questioner blankly. Then his stung pride made itself felt. The blank stare gave place to a flash of indignation. Her eyes quailed before the angry fires in his.

"No," he said, slowly and coldly. "I do not have to crick my neck for Margarida."

Isabel's face showed that she was troubled and almost frightened at what she had done. But he made no haste to condone her offense. He was capable of forgiving the injury almost as soon as it was committed; but he could not so easily surmount his disappointment at hearing anything like indelicacy from her lips. Graver still was this sudden revelation that Isabel did, after all, think thoughts of him as a lover and a marrying man. And it gradually dawned upon him that there had been something nervous in her gaiety from the moment of her bringing the Crowberry's letters. He understood at last that she had come determined to probe him with her sudden question.

He got up and moved away a few yards to a point from which he could see the Atlantic; and there he stood, taking scrupulous counsel with himself. Was it or was it not his duty to make a fresh draft upon the candor with which he had ended the match-making of Senhor Jorge? No. It was not. Yet something had to be done. What hint ought he to drop, or what counter-stroke ought he to deliver? For one foolish half-moment he almost entertained a mean plan of letting Isabel believe that there was indeed something between himself and Margarida.

"I am so sorry," murmured a soft and penitent voice almost in his ear.

After long indecision he asked, in dry tones and without turning to look at her:

"What made you say it?"

Her pause was longer than his. At length she answered:

"It wasn't idle curiosity."

"Then what was it?"

"I hardly know. Only it ... It seemed so dreadful."

"Dreadful?"

"I mean," she explained hastily, "it would be dreadful if you made a marriage like that. To say so is unpardonable impertinence on my part, no doubt. But, to be perfectly frank, I ... well, I suppose I've idealized you a little. You're not like other people I've met. And it shocked me to think of you settling down and, so to speak, giving up the fight."

"What fight?" asked the monk, not willing to help her out.

"Fight is the wrong word. Never mind. You know what I mean. Of course, this Margarida is good and domesticated and she'll make some farmer or tradesman an excellent wife. But can she read or write? Has she more than three ideas in her head? Could she talk with you, or understand you, or even sympathize with you, in anything that matters?"

"I suppose she could," said Antonio. "The simple things of life are the things that matter."

"To simple people, certainly. But you are not simple. You are complicated. Your teeth are easily set on edge. You are sentimental, romantic."

"I am sentimental? I am romantic?" he echoed, with an unfree incredulous laugh. "You are the first to find it out."

"It's true, all the same. What about that shut-up dismal monastery down there? Haven't you woven more romance around it than any ladye ever wove around her dead knight? What about the azulejos? Aren't you you as sentimental over them as any love-sick youth over a withered rose or a lock of hair? Why, you were ready to quarrel with us all, your old friends included, for the sake of a sentimental memory."

"Tell me," the monk demanded, turning to read her eyes, "what do you know about Margarida? What have you heard? Who has been talking to you?"

She was silent.

"From whom have you heard Margarida's name?" he insisted.

"You will think very badly of me," she confessed. "I heard it from Fisher, my maid. Oh, yes! look scandalized by all means. I don't care. The poor girl is in exile. Joanninha, our Portuguese cook, doesn't know much English, and she's old enough to be Fisher's mother. Mrs. Baxter never speaks to Fisher except to scold her or order her about. If I didn't let her chatter now and again to me, she'd go mad. Not that I listen to half she says; but I should be telling you a downright lie if I pretended that I didn't prick up my ears when she began about you and Margarida."

"What did she say?"

"Very little. Only that Joanninha had been gossiping in the village shop, and that somebody had said something about the Senhor Oliveira da Rocha marrying this Margarida."

Antonio relapsed into moody silence. The news that his name was still being linked with Margarida's filled him with chagrin, if only for the sake of Senhor Jorge and his family. When, however, his thoughts came back to Isabel he softened. He saw no reason for doubting that she was disinterested in dreading the disaster of his union with an unlettered and unintelligent country lass, and he was unconsciously flattered by her generous recognition of his finer temperament. Isabel, waiting at his elbow like a repentant child, felt the softening; and, plucking up fresh courage, she said:

"You haven't told me yet if it is true. You've only told me that you don't crick your neck."

"Which do you think?" asked the monk rather sharply. "Do you believe this gossip or not?"

"I don't," she replied, without hesitation. "But ... there's just one thing that might make me credit it."

"What is it?"

"Well. This Margarida is certainly very pretty. She has an adorable color and wonderful eyes, and she wears her mantilla beautifully. Besides--"

"But you've never seen her," interrupted Antonio in alarm.

"Yes, I have. This morning. In church. At Mass. Why weren't you there? I thought you were obliged to go. I went with Joanninha. Don't ask me to say that I liked it. The gilded wood and the crude colors hurt my eyes, and the music was fearful. I couldn't understand a word of the sermon and I didn't know what they were doing at the altar, so I had to pass the time looking at Margarida. If I were a man, I could fall in love with her."

"You went to church?" repeated Antonio, bewildered. Throughout their many talks during the week he had avoided the subject of religion. He had seen that it ruffled her, and he preferred not to discuss it until they knew one another's first principles and prejudices in less weighty matters. But he had not once failed, night or morning, to commend the work of Isabel's conversion to Our Lady of Perpetual Succor, or to pray that he might become the instrument of the Holy Ghost therein.

"Why did you go?" he asked. "To look at Margarida?'

"Most decidedly not," she retorted with spirit. "I didn't know who the pretty girl in the mantilla was till I came home. Fisher only told me this gossip two hours ago."

"Then you went to church to see what it was like?" he persisted, hoping, nevertheless, that there was some better reason.

"I went because I wanted to," she answered. "But come back to the point. Is it true about Margarida?"

He had gradually become aware of a new sympathy between them. All the resentment and distrust faded out of his heart. His gaze sought hers; and not until he could look down into her eyes did he answer:

"It is not true. It never was. It never will be."

The last syllable had hardly sped clear of his lips when the monk was struck dumb by the truth. It flashed from Isabel's radiant eyes like a flaming sword into his heart. A moment later she had turned away her face; but she could not hide the magic roses, the great crimson roses, which sprang to full bloom upon her cheeks. He knew her secret; and she knew that it was known.

To cover her trouble and confusion, she moved to find her little gloves and the embroidered bag. Antonio stooped down before her and was the first to pick them up; but she snatched them almost roughly out of his hand.

"We've stayed too long," she said. "I must go."

In a twinkling she had crossed the stepping-stones and was in full flight for home. No wood-nymph pursued by a god of old ever flew with more gazelle-like grace; and the ravine seemed shorn of nearly all its beauty when the trees hid her from Antonio's eyes.

IV

On Monday morning, although he had business in Navares, Antonio was early at the pool. Throughout a sleepless night his moods had wavered from bitter self-reproach to laborious self-justification. But, amidst all the waverings, one decision stood firm. He must see Isabel at once. He must not run away. He must not tolerate, either on his part or on hers, any spurious delicacy, any eluding of a thorough understanding.

Try as he would Antonio could not wholly close his eyes to the grim humor of the situation. Within the narrow space of three weeks two young and handsome heiresses had thrown themselves at his, a monk of Saint Benedict's, head. But, while this oddity brought a bitter smile to his lips, he was not able to take pleasure or pride in events which were bringing pain and humiliation to others. The feeling uppermost in his heart was one of shame and sorrow for his indiscretion and weakness in meeting Isabel so secretly and so often.

About half-past ten she came, looking pale and rather frail. But she had nerved herself for the ordeal before her, and she was calm and self-controlled.

"I knew you would come," she said quietly. "Yet I feared you wouldn't. Early this morning I nearly sent Jackson down to the farm with a note; but I didn't want people to talk."

"I came nearly an hour ago," the monk replied. His tones were so grave and his manner so solemn that a flush of resentment rose to her cheek.

"Don't make things worse than they are," she cried angrily. "Aren't they difficult enough already? You won't help matters by looking and speaking as if you've come to a funeral."

Antonio could not retort that he was indeed standing by a graveside and that he had come to drop a farewell tear upon their dead happiness. He waited for her next words.

"We're obliged to talk out our talk whether we like it or not," she continued, turning her back upon him and tearing at the fronds of a young mimosa. "I'm not an actress. I can't pretend that I don't know what we both know perfectly well. You can; but I can't. If I left it all to you, I suppose you'd tell me some more about the Emperor Pedro, or about sea-sand grapes. You'd be perfectly polite and, as you imagine, perfectly considerate; and you'd go back to the farm at twelve o'clock."

"I came here," answered Antonio, "expressly to talk and to listen without a moment's false delicacy or a shade of pretense."

"Thank you," she said, with a tinge of irony.

Her slender white fingers were still wantonly busy with the mimosa. The monk racked his wits desperately for an opening sentence. He would have preferred the easier task of facing Senhor Jorge and Donna Perpetua and Sir Percy and Mrs. Baxter and the Visconde de Ponte Quebrada and Queen Victoria's Comptroller and the Fazenda official all combined. Words refused to come. But it fell out that his dumbness was all for the best.

"Listen," said Isabel, without turning around. "You don't expect me to find this interview very delightful, do you? You'll admit that it's easier for me to talk about usurpers and bunches of grapes than about ... than about all this. I'll tell you what I've done. Perhaps I've done wrong, as usual; but I can't help it. I'm going to give you a letter--I mean a paper, a scribble. Some things are so much easier to write than to say. After I've given it to you I'm going away for a walk. I shall come back in half an hour. You may open my little bag. It is in there."

Antonio loosened the cords of the silken pouch with respectful hands. It contained the damascened key of the chapel, a tiny lump of shining felspar picked up from the path, a pair of fine gloves, two or three small coins, and a folded paper. As he drew the paper forth, a snapping of twigs made him look up. Isabel was breaking her way through the trees.

His hand trembled as he unfolded the document. It was a quarto sheet filled from top to bottom with Isabel's fine writing. The monk glanced down the hill to make sure that she had come to no harm; and as soon as he caught sight of her walking quickly along one of the woodland paths, he sat down on a warm boulder and began to read these lines:

_Four years ago you and Mr. Austin Crowberry visited the Earl of Oakland. You dined at Castle Oakland, and stayed all the next day._

_The Countess of Oakland is my aunt. I hardly ever see her, because my father quarreled with the Earl nearly twenty years ago. But the Earl has a niece, Lady Julia Blighe, whom I met in London a few days after you went away. Perhaps you remember her. She is a little over-magnificent, and wears too much jewelry at once; but people go mad over her, and some say she is the most beautiful woman in England._

_You made a most extraordinary impression on Lady Julia. She admitted giving you a flower. I grew tired of hearing about you--nearly bored to death. At first she caused me to picture you as a beautiful Byronic hero, with a Great Grief or a Dark Secret; and I detest all that sort of trash and gush. But one day, while she was chattering, a miracle happened. I can't describe it. Perhaps it was like someone throwing wide a door that had always been shut, or setting free a bird or animal that had always been caged. All in one moment you became the most important fact in the world. Why? How? I don't know. I thought I knew you through and through. Often I could have said to Lady Julia: "No. That's all wrong. You know nothing about him."_