“In order to cut short calumny most quickly, one may cause the death of the calumniator, but as secretly as possible to avoid observation.”

“It is absolutely allowable to kill a man whenever the general welfare or proper security demands it.”

If any man has committed a crime, St. Liguori and other Jesuit writers hold that he may swear to a civil authority that he is innocent of it provided that he has already confessed it to his spiritual father and received absolution.  It is, they say, no longer on his conscience.

“Pray,” said the founder of the society, “as if everything depended on prayer, and act as if everything depended on action.”

“Of what are you thinking?” Sarrion asked suddenly, when they had ridden almost to the city gates in silence.

“I was wondering what Juanita will say, some day, when she knows and understands everything.”

“I was not wondering what Juanita will say,” confessed Sarrion with a laugh, “but what Evasio Mon will do.”

For Sarrion persisted in taking an optimistic view of Juanita and that which must supervene when she had grown into understanding and knowledge.

Marcos went back to the hotel.  He had many arrangements to make.  Sarrion rode to the large house in the Calle de la Dormitaleria where the school of the Sisters of the True Faith is located to this day.  In an hour he joined Marcos in the little sitting-room looking on to the Plaza de la Constitucion.

“All is going well,” he said, “I have seen Dolores.  They go across to the Cathedral for vespers at five o’clock.  It will be almost dark.  You have only to wait in the inner patio, adjoining the cloisters.  They pass through that way.  Juanita will be sent back for something that is forgotten.  And then is your time.  You can have ten minutes.  It is not long.”

“It will do,” said Marcos rather gloomily.  He was not afraid of the whole Society of Jesuits, of the king, nor yet of Don Carlos.  But he feared Juanita.

“We need not inquire who will send her back.  But she will come.  She will not expect to see you.  Remember that and do not frighten her.”

So Marcos set out at dusk to await Juanita.  The entrance to the two patios that give entrance to the Cathedral cloister is immediately opposite to the door of the school of the Sisters of the True Faith.  A lamp swings over the doorway in the Calle de la Dormitaleria.  There is no lamp in the first patio but another hangs in the vaulted arch leading from one patio to the other.  In the cloister itself, which is the most beautiful in Spain, there are two dim lamps.

Marcos sat down on the wooden bench which runs right round the quadrangle of the inner patio.  He had not long to wait.  The girls passed through whispering and laughing among themselves.  Two nuns led the way.  Sor Teresa followed the last two girls, looking straight in front of her between the wings of her great cap.  One of the last pair was Juanita.  She walked listlessly, Marcos thought.  He rose and went towards the archway leading from the inner patio to the cloisters.  The moon was rising and cast a white light down upon the delicate stone-work of the cloister windows.