“We arrived from Madrid this morning,” said the gardener’s widow as they went up.  “I kept her at an inn till it was time to bring her to the Cathedral in the evening.  It is the best time, for Esteban is in the choir, and you will have time to settle things here.  I spent three days there.  Ay, Gabriel, my son, what things I have seen, what hells there are for poor women! and we call ourselves Christians, but I think we are fiends!  Mercifully I had friends at court—­some old bell-ringers who had been in the Cathedral and who remembered the gardener’s widow.  I wanted everything, even money, to get this unhappy girl out of the devil’s clutches.”

The upper cloister was quite deserted.  On arriving at the door of the Lunas the girl seemed to wake up, and drew quickly back with a look of terror, as though inside the “habitation” some great danger was awaiting her.

“Go in, woman, go in,” said the aunt; “it is your home.  You had to come back some time or other.”

And she pushed her till she was through the door.  Once inside the sitting-room her tears ceased; she looked round with astonishment, no doubt surprised at finding herself there.  Her eyes examined everything with a sort of stupefaction, as though marvelling that everything should be in the same place as five years before, and with an exactitude that made her doubt if such a long time had really elapsed.  Nothing seemed changed in that little world under the shadow of the Cathedral.  She only, who had left it in the bloom of her youth, now returned aged and broken.

There was a long silence between the three people.

“Your room, Sagrario,” said Gabriel at last gently, “is the same as when you left it.  Go in and do not come out till I call you.  Be calm and do not cry; trust me.  You do not know me well, but the aunt will have told you that I am interested in your fate.  Your father will soon be coming; hide yourself and be silent.  I repeat it again, do not come out till I call you.”

When the old woman and her nephew were alone they could hear the girl’s suffocating sobs that burst out on seeing her old room.  Afterwards they heard a sound as though she were throwing herself on the bed, and the violence of her grief seemed to become more and more uncontrolled.

“Poor child!” said the old woman, who was very nearly crying also, “she is good, and she has repented of her sins; if only her father had sought her out when that rascal deserted her, what shame and misery it would have spared her.  And her health?  I really think she is worse than you are, Gabriel.  Oh, those men! with their honour which is nothing more than lies!  What is honourable is to be charitable and compassionate to others, and to harm no one.  I said this the other day when I was shocked at the shamelessness of my son-in-law, who was furious at my going to Madrid to find the child.  He spoke of the honour of the family, and that if Sagrario returned no decent people could live in the Cathedral, and that he could not allow his daughter to stand at the door; and he such a thief that he steals the Virgin’s wax every day, and deceives the devout who pay him for masses that are never said; that is why his skin shines so and he is so fat.  With so much honour.”