And Marcos always followed his father’s advice.  Later he found that Spain indeed offered no career to honest men at this time.  Gradually he supplanted his father in an unrecognised, indefinable monarchy in the Valley of the Wolf; and there, in the valley, they waited; as good Spaniards have waited these hundred years until such time as God’s wrath shall be overpast.

“I have a long story to tell you,” said the Count, when his son returned and sat down at once with a keen appetite to his first breakfast of coffee and bread.  “And I will tell it without comment, without prejudice, if I can.”

Marcos nodded.  The Count had lighted a cigarette and now leant against the window which opened on to the heavily barred balcony overlooking the Calle San Gregorio.

“Four nights ago,” he said, “at about midnight, Francisco de Mogente returned secretly to Saragossa.  I think he was coming to this house; but we shall never know that.  No one knew he was coming—­not even Juanita.”

The Count glanced at his son only long enough to note the passage of a sort of shadow across his dark eyes at the mention of the schoolgirl’s name.

“Francisco was attacked in the street down there, at the corner of the Calle San Gregorio, and was killed,” he concluded.

Marcos rose and crossed the room towards the window.  He was, it appeared, an eminently practical man, and desired to see the exact spot where Mogente had fallen before the story went any farther.  Perro went so far as to push his plebeian head through the bars and look down into the street.  It was his misfortune to fall into the fault of excess as it is the misfortune of most parvenus.

“Does Juanita know?” asked Marcos.

“Yes.  My sister Dolores has told her.  Poor child!  It is more in the nature of a disappointment than a sorrow.  Her heart is young; and disappointment is the sorrow of the young.”

Marcos sat down again in silence.

“We must remember,” said the Count, “that she never knew him.  It will pass.  I saw the incident from this window.  There is no door at this side of the house.  I should, as you know, have had to go round by the Paseo del Ebro.  To render help was out of the question.  I went down afterwards, however, when help had come and the dying man had been carried away—­by a friar, Marcos!  I had seen something fall from the hand of the murdered man.  I went down into the street and picked it up.  It was the sword-stick which Juanita sent to her father for the New Year.”

“Why did he not let us know that he was coming to Europe?” asked Marcos.

“Ah!  That he will tell us hereafter.  The mere fact of his being attacked in the streets of Saragossa and killed for the money that was in his pockets is, of course, quite simple, and common enough.  But why should he be cared for by a friar, and taken to one of those numerous religious houses which have sprung into unseen existence all over Spain since the Jesuits were expelled?”