During these two weeks he never went to the shoemaker’s house, and so lost sight of his various friends.  The bell-ringer and his friends were lost in astonishment.  A man of so much learning, to work like one of themselves in order to help his brother!

The Senora Tomasa stopped him one morning by the iron railing of the garden.

“I have news, Gabriel.  I think I know where our child is.  I won’t say any more; but be ready to help me.  The day when you least expect it you may see her in the Cathedral.”

The erection of the monument was finished.  All that part of the church between the choir and the door del Perdon was occupied by this showy and ponderous fabric.  According to their traditional custom all the Toledans gathered to admire—­the steps covered with rows of burning lights, the Roman legionaries in alabaster leaning on their lances, and the rich curtain with its innumerable folds that hung from the vaulting down to the platform of the monument.

On the evening of Holy Thursday Gabriel stood considering what was in some sense his work, surrounded by a group of worshippers.  The Cathedral shone with its immaculate whiteness, in spite of the black veils that covered both statues and altars.  The clouds of colour from the lovely rose windows relieved the funereal aspect of the religious ceremony, while from the choir a tenor voice intoned the lamentations of the oriental prophet.

Gabriel felt someone pulling his jacket, and turning, saw the gardener’s widow.

“Come, nephew, we have got her here; she is waiting for you in the cloister.”

Coming out, the Senora Tomasa pointed to a woman sitting crouched on the stone coping of the garden, wrapped in an old cloak, and with the headkerchief drawn down over her eyes.

Gabriel would never have recognised her.  He remembered the pretty smiling face of former years, and he looked almost with horror at the tarnished youth, haggard with prominent cheek-bones, of the face before him.  The eyes deep sunk in the sockets without eyebrows or eyelashes, with the pupils still beautiful, but dulled with a glassy opacity.  Everything about her revealed poverty and desolation; the dress was a summer one, and from under it showed her split boots much too large for her feet.

“Salute him, child,” said the old woman.  “It is your Uncle Gabriel, one of God’s angels, in spite of his misfortunes, and you owe it to him that we searched for you.”

The gardener’s widow pushed Sagrario towards her Uncle, but the young woman lowered her head, moved her shoulders and drew back, as though she could not endure the presence of a member of her family; she covered her face with her wretched cloak to hide her tears.

“Aunt, let us go home,” said Gabriel, “it is not good for the child to be here.”

At the cloister staircase they made the young woman pass on in front; she went up with her head bent and without looking, as though her feet trod those broken steps instinctively.