"This very day we are going to Manila. You stay here to challenge him to a duel, and, if you don't, I'll tell Don Santiago that all that you have told him is a lie. I will tell him----" "But, Doña Victorina! Doña Victorina!" interrupted Linares, pale and going closer to her. "You keep quiet. Don't make me call to mind"----and he added in a low voice--"Don't be imprudent, especially just now." Just at that time, when this was going on, Captain Tiago arrived home from the cock-pit. He was downhearted. He had lost his lásak. But Doña Victorina did not give him much time to sigh. In a few words, and with many insults, she related to him what had passed, she, of course, trying to put herself in a good light. "Linares is going to challenge him. Do you hear? If he don't, I won't let him marry your daughter. Don't you permit it. If he has no courage, he does not merit Clarita." "Then you are going to marry this gentleman?" asked Sinang, with her jolly eyes full of tears. "I knew that you were discreet, but I did not think you so fickle." Maria Clara, pale as wax, raising herself half up, looked at her father with frightened eyes, and then at Doña Victorina and Linares. The latter turned red in the face, Captain Tiago looked down, and the señora added: "Clarita, bear it in mind, and never marry a man who does not wear trousers. You expose yourself to insults like a dog, if you do." But the young maiden did not reply and said to her friends: "Take me to my room, for I cannot go alone." They helped her to her feet, and, leaning her marble-like head on pretty Sinang's shoulder, and, with the arms of her friend around her waist, she went to her bedroom. That night the doctor and his wife collected their things together, submitted their account to Captain Tiago--which amounted to several thousand pesos--and very early on the following day, left for Manila in the Captain's carriage. To timid Linares they intrusted the rôle of the avenger. CHAPTER XXIX THE ENIGMA. As Lucas had announced, Ibarra arrived the next day. His first visit was to the family of Captain Tiago, with the object of seeing Maria Clara and telling her that His Most Illustrious Greatness had already reconciled him with the Church. He brought a letter of recommendation to the curate, written by the hand of the Archbishop himself. Aunt Isabel was not a little delighted over it, for she liked the young man and did not look favorably upon the marriage of her niece with Linares. Captain Tiago was not at home. "Come in," said the aunt in her half-Castellano language. "Maria, Don Crisostomo is again in the grace of God. The Archbishop has dis-excommunicated him."