“No,” answered Marcos, to whom the question had been addressed.

“She may get tired of drums, you know.  Just as we get tired saying our prayers at school.  I am sure she ought to reflect before she marries a soldier.  I wouldn’t if I were she.  Oh! but I forgot....”

She paused and turning to Marcos she gripped his arm with a confidential emphasis.  “Do you know, Marcos, I keep on forgetting that we are married.  You don’t mind, do you?  I am not a bit sorry, you know.  I am so glad, because it gets me away from school.  And I hate school.  And there was always the dread that they would make me a nun despite us all.  You don’t know what it is to feel helpless and to have a dread; to wake up with it at night and wish you were dead and all the bother was over.”

“It is all over now, without being dead,” Marcos assured her, with his slow smile.

“Quite sure?”

“Quite sure,” answered Marcos.

“And I shall never go back to school again.  And they have no power over me; neither Sor Teresa, nor Sor Dorothea, nor the dear mother.  We always call her the ‘dear mother,’ you know, because we have to; but we hate her.  But that is all over now, is it not?”

“Yes,” answered Marcos.

“Then I am glad I married you,” said Juanita, with conviction.

“And I need not be afraid of Senor Mon, with his gentle smile?” asked Juanita, turning on Marcos with a sudden shrewd gravity.

“No.”

She gave a great sigh of relief and shook back her mantilla.  Then she laughed and turned to Sarrion.

“He always says ‘yes’ or ’no’—­and only that,” she remarked confidentially to him.  “But somehow it seems enough.”

They had reached the corner of the street now, and the carriage was approaching them.  It was one of the heavy carriages used only on state occasions which had stood idle for many years in the stables of the Palacio Sarrion.  The horses were from Torre Garda and the men in their quiet liveries greeted her with country frankness.

“It is one of the grand carriages,” said Juanita.

“Yes.”

“Why?” she asked.

“To take you home,” replied Sarrion.

Juanita got into the carriage and sat down in silence.  The man who closed the door touched his hat, not to the Sarrions but to her; and she returned the salutation with a friendly smile.

“Where are we going?” she asked after a pause.

“To the Casa Sarrion,” was the reply.

“Is it open, after all these years?”

“Yes,” answered Sarrion.

“But why?”

“For you,” answered Sarrion.

Juanita turned and looked out of the window, with bright and thoughtful eyes.  She asked no more questions and they drove to the Palacio Sarrion in silence.

There they found Cousin Peligros awaiting them.

Cousin Peligros was a Sarrion and seemed in some indefinite way to consider that in so being and so existing she placed the world under an obligation.  That she considered the world bound, in return for the honour she conferred upon it, to support her in comfort and deference was a patent fact hardly worth putting into words.