"We're obliged to talk out our talk whether we like it or not," she continued, turning her back upon him and tearing at the fronds of a young mimosa. "I'm not an actress. I can't pretend that I don't know what we both know perfectly well. You can; but I can't. If I left it all to you, I suppose you'd tell me some more about the Emperor Pedro, or about sea-sand grapes. You'd be perfectly polite and, as you imagine, perfectly considerate; and you'd go back to the farm at twelve o'clock." "I came here," answered Antonio, "expressly to talk and to listen without a moment's false delicacy or a shade of pretense." "Thank you," she said, with a tinge of irony. Her slender white fingers were still wantonly busy with the mimosa. The monk racked his wits desperately for an opening sentence. He would have preferred the easier task of facing Senhor Jorge and Donna Perpetua and Sir Percy and Mrs. Baxter and the Visconde de Ponte Quebrada and Queen Victoria's Comptroller and the Fazenda official all combined. Words refused to come. But it fell out that his dumbness was all for the best. "Listen," said Isabel, without turning around. "You don't expect me to find this interview very delightful, do you? You'll admit that it's easier for me to talk about usurpers and bunches of grapes than about ... than about all this. I'll tell you what I've done. Perhaps I've done wrong, as usual; but I can't help it. I'm going to give you a letter--I mean a paper, a scribble. Some things are so much easier to write than to say. After I've given it to you I'm going away for a walk. I shall come back in half an hour. You may open my little bag. It is in there." Antonio loosened the cords of the silken pouch with respectful hands. It contained the damascened key of the chapel, a tiny lump of shining felspar picked up from the path, a pair of fine gloves, two or three small coins, and a folded paper. As he drew the paper forth, a snapping of twigs made him look up. Isabel was breaking her way through the trees. His hand trembled as he unfolded the document. It was a quarto sheet filled from top to bottom with Isabel's fine writing. The monk glanced down the hill to make sure that she had come to no harm; and as soon as he caught sight of her walking quickly along one of the woodland paths, he sat down on a warm boulder and began to read these lines: _Four years ago you and Mr. Austin Crowberry visited the Earl of Oakland. You dined at Castle Oakland, and stayed all the next day._ _The Countess of Oakland is my aunt. I hardly ever see her, because my father quarreled with the Earl nearly twenty years ago. But the Earl has a niece, Lady Julia Blighe, whom I met in London a few days after you went away. Perhaps you remember her. She is a little over-magnificent, and wears too much jewelry at once; but people go mad over her, and some say she is the most beautiful woman in England._