“I suppose,” she said, “you are alone as usual.  Is it safe, after nightfall—­you, who have so many enemies?”

“Marcos is at Torre Garda, where I left him three days ago.  The snows are melting and the fishing is good.  It is unusual to come at this hour, I know, but I came for a special purpose.”

He glanced towards the door.  The quiet of this house seemed to arouse a sense of suspicion and antagonism in his mind.

“I wished, of course, to see you also, though I am aware that the affections are out of place in this—­holy atmosphere.”

She winced almost imperceptibly and said nothing.

“I want to see Juanita de Mogente,” said the Count.  “It is unusual, I know, but in this place you are all-powerful.  It is important, or I should not ask it.”

“She is in bed.  They go to bed at eight o’clock.”

“I know.  Is not that all the better?  She has a room to herself, I recollect.  You can arouse her and bring her to me and no one need know that she has had a visitor—­except, I suppose, the peeping eyes that haunt a nunnery corridor.”

He gave a shrug of the shoulder.

“Mother of God!” he exclaimed.  “The air of secrecy infects one.  I am not a secretive man.  All the world knows my opinions.  And here am I plotting like a friar.  Can I see Juanita?”

And he laughed quietly as he looked at his sister.

“Yes, I suppose so.”

He nodded his thanks.

“And, Dolores, listen!” he said.  “Let me see her alone.  It may save complications in the future.  You understand?”

Sor Teresa turned in the doorway and looked at him.

He could not see the expression of her eyes, which were in deep shadow, and she left him wondering whether she had understood or not.

It would seem that Sor Teresa, despite her slow dignity of manner, was a quick person.  For in a few moments the door of the waiting-room was again opened and a young girl hastened breathlessly in.  She was not more than sixteen or seventeen, and as she came in she threw back her dark hair with one hand.

“I was asleep, Uncle Ramon,” she exclaimed with a light laugh, “and the good Sister had to drag me out of bed before I would wake up.  And then, of course, I thought it was a fire.  We have always hoped for a fire, you know.”

She was continuing to attend to her hasty dress as she spoke, tying the ribbon at the throat of her gay dressing-gown with careless fingers.

“I had not even time to pull up my stockings,” she concluded, making good the omission with a friendly nonchalance.  Then she turned to look at Sor Teresa, but her eyes found instead the closed door.

“Oh!” she cried, “the good Sister has forgotten to come back with me.  And it is against the rules.  What a joke!  We are not allowed to see visitors alone—­except father or mother, you know.  I don’t care.  It was not my fault.”