The padre was still dissatisfied.  “There is only one house just this side of Setenil, and Esteban Silvela I saw with my own eyes to-day in Ronda.”

“He may well be home by now, and it is not Esteban whom I go to see.”

“Not Esteban,” exclaimed the padre.  “Then it will be—­”

“His sister, the Senora Christina,” said Shere with a laugh at his companion’s persistency.  “Since the brother and sister live alone, and it is not the brother, why it will be the sister.  You argue still very closely, padre.”

The padre stood back a little from Shere and stared.  Then he said slyly, and with the air of one who quotes: 

“All women are born tricksters.”

“Those were rank words,” said Shere composedly.

“Yet they were often spoken when you grew vines in the Ronda Valley.”

“Then a crowd of men must know me for a fool.  A young man may make a mistake, padre, and exaggerate a disappointment.  Besides, I had not then seen the senora.  Esteban I knew, but she was a child, and known to me only by name.”  And then, warmed by the pleasure in his old friend’s face, he said, “I will tell you about it.”

They walked on slowly side by side, while Shere, who now that he had begun to confide was quite swept away, bent over his saddle and told how after inheriting a modest fortune, after wandering for three years from city to city, he had at last come to Paris, and there, at a Carlist conversazione, had heard the familiar name called from a doorway, and had seen the unfamiliar face appear.  Shere described Christina.  She walked with the grace of a deer, as though the floor beneath her foot had the spring of turf.  The blood was bright in her face; her brown hair shone; she was sweet with youth; the suppleness of her body showed it and the steadiness of her great clear eyes.

“She passed me,” he went on, “and the arrogance of what I used to think and say came sharp home to me like a pain.  I suppose that I stared—­it was an accident, of course—­perhaps my face showed something of my trouble; but just as she was opposite me her fan slipped through her fingers and clattered on the floor.”

The padre was at a loss to understand Shere’s embarrassment in relating so small a matter.

“Well,” said he, “you picked up the fan and so—­”

“No,” interrupted Shere.  His embarrassment increased, and he stammered out awkwardly, “Just for the moment, you see, I began to wonder whether after all I had not been right before; whether after all any woman would or could baulk herself of a fraction of any man’s admiration, supposing that it would only cost a trick to extort it.  And while I was wondering she herself stooped, picked up the fan, and good-humouredly dropped me a curtsey for my lack of manners.  Esteban presented me to her that evening.  There followed two magical months in Paris and a June in London.”

“But, Esteban?” said the padre, doubtfully.  “I do not understand.  I know something of Esteban Silvela.  A lean man of plots and devices.  My friend, do you know that Esteban has not a groat?  The Silvela fortunes and estate came from the mother and went to the daughter.  Esteban is the Senora Christina’s steward, and her marriage would alter his position at the least.  Did he not spoil the magic of the months in Paris?”