There was a momentary silence while Estella freed herself from her cousin’s grasp. Conyngham looked at the woman he loved while she stood, little more than a child, with something youthful and inimitably graceful in the lines of her throat and averted face. Would she accept Julia’s offer? Conyngham bit his lip and awaited her decision. Then, as if divining his thought, she turned and looked at him gravely. ‘No,’ she said; ‘I will do it.’ She went towards the window. Her father and Conyngham had taken their places, one on each side, as if she were the Queen indeed. She stood for a moment on the threshold, and then passed out into the moonlight, alone. Immediately there arose the most terrifying of all earthly sounds—the dull, antagonistic roar of a thousand angry throats. Estella walked to the front of the balcony and stood, with an intrepidity which was worthy of the royal woman whose part she played, looking down on the upturned faces. A red flash streaked the darkness of a far corner of the square, and a bullet whistled through the open window into the woodwork of a mirror. ‘Come back,’ whispered General Vincente. ‘Slowly, my child—slowly.’ Estella stood for a moment looking down with a royal insolence, then turned, and with measured steps approached the window. As she passed in she met Conyngham’s eyes, and that one moment assuredly made two lives worth living. CHAPTER XXIX MIDNIGHT AND DAWN ‘I have set my life upon a cast And I will stand the hazard of the die.’ ‘EXCELLENCY,’ reported a man who entered the room at this moment, ‘they are bringing carts of fuel through the Calle de la Ciudad to set against the door and burn it.’ ‘To set against which door, my honest friend?’ ‘The great door on the Plaza, Excellency; the other is an old door of iron.’ ‘And they cannot burn it or break it open?’ ‘No, Excellency. And, besides, there are loopholes in the thickness of the wall at the side.’ The General smiled on this man as being after his own heart. ‘One may not shoot to-night, my friend. I have already given the order.’ ‘But one may prick them with the sword, Excellency?’ suggested the trooper, with a sort of suppressed enthusiasm. The General shrugged his shoulders, wisely tolerant. ‘Oh yes,’ he answered, ‘I suppose one may prick them with the sword.’ Conyngham, who had been standing half in and half out of the open window, listening to this conversation, now came forward. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘that I can clear the Plaza from time to time if you give me twenty men. We can thus gain time.’ ‘Street-fighting,’ answered the General gravely. ‘Do you know anything of it? It is nasty work.’ ‘I know something of it. One has to shout very loud. I studied it—at Dublin University.’ ‘To be sure—I forgot.’