man, with a thin nose like a sword blade and perfectly round eyes,
a character well known to the whole Carlist army. The two youths

stopped under the trees at a distance, but the old fellow came
quite close up and gazed at her, screwing up his eyes as if looking

at the sun. Then he raised his arm very slowly and took his red
boina off his bald head. I watched her smiling at him all the

time. I daresay she knew him as well as she knew the old rock.
Very old rock. The rock of ages - and the aged man - landmarks of

her youth. Then the mules started walking smartly forward, with
the three peasants striding alongside of them, and vanished between

the trees. These fellows were most likely sent out by her uncle
the Cura.

"It was a peaceful scene, the morning light, the bit of open
country framed in steep stony slopes, a high peak or two in the

distance, the thin smoke of some invisible caserios, rising
straight up here and there. Far away behind us the guns had ceased

and the echoes in the gorges had died out. I never knew what peace
meant before. . .

"Nor since," muttered Mr. Blunt after a pause and then went on.
"The little stone church of her uncle, the holy man of the family,

might have been round the corner of the next spur of the nearest
hill. I dismounted to bandage the shoulder of my trooper. It was

only a nasty long scratch. While I was busy about it a bell began
to ring in the distance. The sound fell deliciously on the ear,

clear like the morning light. But it stopped all at once. You
know how a distant bell stops suddenly. I never knew before what

stillness meant. While I was wondering at it the fellow holding
our horses was moved to uplift his voice. He was a Spaniard, not a

Basque, and he trolled out in Castilian that song you know,
"'Oh bells of my native village,

I am going away . . . good-bye!'
He had a good voice. When the last note had floated away I

remounted, but there was a charm in the spot, something particular
and individual because while we were looking at it before turning

our horses' heads away the singer said: 'I wonder what is the name
of this place,' and the other man remarked: 'Why, there is no

village here,' and the first one insisted: 'No, I mean this spot,
this very place.' The wounded trooperdecided that it had no name

probably. But he was wrong. It had a name. The hill, or the
rock, or the wood, or the whole had a name. I heard of it by

chance later. It was - Lastaola."
A cloud of tobacco smoke from Mills' pipe drove between my head and

the head of Mr. Blunt, who, strange to say, yawned slightly. It
seemed to me an obvious affectation on the part of that man of

perfect manners, and, moreover, suffering from distressing
insomnia.

"This is how we first met and how we first parted," he said in a
weary, indifferent tone. "It's quite possible that she did see her

uncle on the way. It's perhaps on this occasion that she got her
sister to come out of the wilderness. I have no doubt she had a

pass from the French Government giving her the completest freedom
of action. She must have got it in Paris before leaving."

Mr. Blunt broke out into worldly, slightlycynical smiles.
"She can get anything she likes in Paris. She could get a whole

army over the frontier if she liked. She could get herself
admitted into the Foreign Office at one o'clock in the morning if

it so pleased her. Doors fly open before the heiress of Mr.
Allegre. She has inherited the old friends, the old connections .

. . Of course, if she were a toothless old woman . . . But, you
see, she isn't. The ushers in all the ministries bow down to the

ground therefore, and voices from the innermost sanctums take on an
eager tone when they say, 'Faites entrer.' My mother knows

something about it. She has followed her career with the greatest
attention. And Rita herself is not even surprised. She

accomplishes most extraordinary things, as naturally as buying a
pair of gloves. People in the shops are very polite and people in

the world are like people in the shops. What did she know of the
world? She had seen it only from the saddle. Oh, she will get

your cargo released for you all right. How will she do it? . .
Well, when it's done - you follow me, Mills? - when it's done she

will hardly know herself."
"It's hardly possible that she shouldn't be aware," Mills

pronounced calmly.
"No, she isn't an idiot," admitted Mr. Blunt, in the same matter-

of-fact voice. "But she confessed to myself only the other day
that she suffered from a sense of unreality. I told her that at

any rate she had her own feelings surely. And she said to me:
Yes, there was one of them at least about which she had no doubt;

and you will never guess what it was. Don't try. I happen to
know, because we are pretty good friends."

At that moment we all changed our attitude slightly. Mills'
staring eyes moved for a glance towards Blunt, I, who was occupying

the divan, raised myself on the cushions a little and Mr. Blunt,
with half a turn, put his elbow on the table.

"I asked her what it was. I don't see," went on Mr. Blunt, with a
perfectlyhorriblegentleness, "why I should have shown particular

consideration to the heiress of Mr. Allegre. I don't mean to that
particular mood of hers. It was the mood of weariness. And so she

told me. It's fear. I will say it once again: Fear. . . ."
He added after a pause, "There can be not the slightest doubt of

her courage. But she distinctly uttered the word fear."
There was under the table the noise of Mills stretching his legs.

"A person of imagination," he began, "a young, virgin intelligence,
steeped for nearly five years in the talk of Allegre's studio,

where every hard truth had been cracked and every belief had been
worried into shreds. They were like a lot of intellectual dogs,

you know . . ."
"Yes, yes, of course," Blunt interrupted hastily, "the intellectual

personality altogether adrift, a soul without a home . . . but I,
who am neither very fine nor very deep, I am convinced that the

fear is material."
"Because she confessed to it being that?" insinuated Mills.

"No, because she didn't," contradicted Blunt, with an angry frown
and in an extremely suave voice. "In fact, she bit her tongue.

And considering what good friends we are (under fire together and
all that) I conclude that there is nothing there to boast of.

Neither is my friendship, as a matter of fact."
Mills' face was the very perfection of indifference. But I who was

looking at him, in my innocence, to discover what it all might
mean, I had a notion that it was perhaps a shade too perfect.

"My leave is a farce," Captain Blunt burst out, with a most
unexpected exasperation. "As an officer of Don Carlos, I have no

more standing than a bandit. I ought to have been interned in
those filthy old barracks in Avignon a long time ago. . . Why am I

not? Because Dona Rita exists and for no other reason on earth.
Of course it's known that I am about. She has only to whisper over

the wires to the Minister of the Interior, 'Put that bird in a cage
for me,' and the thing would be done without any more formalities

than that. . . Sad world this," he commented in a changed tone.
"Nowadays a gentleman who lives by his sword is exposed to that

sort of thing."
It was then for the first time I heard Mr. Mills laugh. It was a

deep, pleasant, kindly note, not very loud and altogether free from
that quality of derision that spoils so many laughs and gives away

the secret hardness of hearts. But neither was it a very joyous
laugh.

"But the truth of the matter is that I am 'en mission,'" continued
Captain Blunt. "I have been instructed to settle some things, to

set other things going, and, by my instructions, Dona Rita is to be