“I should have gone to the Casa Sarrion to warn your father or yourself that Juanita had been taken from my control and that I did not know where she was.”

“And then?” inquired Marcos.

“And then I should have gone to Torrero,” she answered with a smile at his persistence; “where I intend to go now.  Then I shall learn at what hour and in which chapel the ceremony is to take place to-day.”

“The ceremony in which Juanita has been ordered to take part as a spectator only?”

Sor Toresa nodded her head.

“It cannot well take place without you?”

“No,” she answered.  “Neither can it take place without Evasio Mon.  One of the novices is his niece, and, where possible, the near relations are necessarily present.”

“Yes—­I know,” said Marcos.  He had apparently studied the subject somewhat carefully.  “And Evasio Mon is delayed on the road, which gives us a little more time to mature our plans.”

Sor Teresa said nothing, but glanced towards Marcos who was watching the road.

“You need not be anxious, Dolores,” said Sarrion, cheerfully.  “Between politicians these matters settle themselves quietly enough in Spain.”

“I ceased to be anxious,” replied Sor Teresa, “from the moment that I saw Marcos in the inn yard.”

It was Marcos who spoke next, after a short silence.

“Your horses are ready, if you are rested,” he said.  “We shall return to Saragossa by a shorter route.”

“And I again assure you,” added Sor Teresa’s brother, “that there is no need for anxiety.  We shall arrange this matter quite quietly with Evasio Mon.  We shall take Juanita away from your school to-day.  Our cousin Peligros is already at the Casa Sarrion waiting her arrival.  Marcos has arranged these matters.”

He made a gesture of the hand, presumably symbolic of Marcos’ plans, for it was short and sharp.

“There will be nothing for you to do,” said Marcos from the window.  “Waste no time.  I see a carriage some miles away.”

So Sor Teresa went on her journey.  Her dealings with men had been confined to members of that sex who went about their purpose in an indirect and roundabout way, speaking in generalities, attentive to insignificant detail, possessing that smaller sense of proportion which is a feminine failing and which must always make a tangled jumble of those public affairs in which women and priests may play a part.  She had come into actual touch in this little room of an obscure inn with a force which seemed to walk calmly on its way over the petty tyranny that ruled her daily life, which seemed to fear no man, neither God as represented by man, but shaped for itself a Deity, large-minded and manly; Who considered the broad inner purpose rather than petty detail of outward observance.

The Sarrions returned to their gloomy house on the Paseo del Ebro and there awaited the information which Sor Teresa alone could give them.  They had not waited long before the driver of her carriage, who had seemed to recognise Marcos on the road from Alagon, brought a note: