FROM the observatory high up among the hills, Mr. Robles had witnessed the arrest and the departure of the prisoner. He had understood every move just as if he had been present on the verandah down below and had heard each spoken word. As he stood erect, his hand still rested on the telescope. For a few moments he pondered, then murmured to himself as he turned to leave the room: “A bad complication! I must break the news tonight to Merle. Poor little girl!” But it was two hours later before he wended his way down through the moonlit forest in the direction of La Siesta. There dinner was over. No word of untoward happenings had as yet come from the outside world to disturb the tranquillity of the little household. In the drawing room Merle was at the piano, while Grace, close by, was curled on a sofa reading the latest novel. At some distance from the young girls was Mrs. Darlington, occupied intermittently over a piece of embroidery. She was seated in semi-darkness, only her hands and her work illumed by the soft pink radiance of a shaded lamp resting on a little table by her side. In the evening costume of the chatelaine of La Siesta was the suggestion of old lace and old-time lavender—the old lace at her bosom and around her neck, the subtle fragrance of lavender exhaled from her garments that gave to her a sort of personal atmosphere. And as she sat musingly, with the skeins of silk passing through her fingers, she might have formed a picture of some Penelope seated at the loom of pensive memory. The music from the piano was in harmony with both her mood and her attitude—the soft dreamy melodies of Mendelssohn’s “Songs without Words” to which she was vaguely listening while busy with her thoughts and her stitches. Downstairs amid the oriental luxuriousness of the cosy corner sat Tia Teresa, waiting in the dark to intercept the visitor of whose coming she had been apprized by a secret messenger. And at last Ricardo Robles came, with the noiseless footfall that was characteristic of the man and imparted to him an air of mystery. He was standing by the old duenna’s side before she had realized his presence. “I wanted a few words with you first of all, Tia Teresa,” he murmured, as she grasped his hand in both her own and affectionately kissed it. “Something has happened.” “I know what has happened, Don Manuel,” she whispered. “The young man deserved his fate, for I am sure you saw what occurred in the rose garden during the afternoon. For one of his breed to have dared even to touch my little girl!” She hissed the words venomously, then added in calmer tone: “So all is well. He brought down his doom upon his own head, and vengeance for Rosetta begins.” Robles pressed her hand as he disengaged his own from her almost fiercely caressing touch.