‘By the way,’ said Conyngham, as the General moved away, ‘I am instructed to inform you that I am attached to your staff as extra aide-de-camp during your stay in Madrid.’ The General nodded and left Estella and Conyngham alone in the drawing-room. Conyngham turned on Estella. ‘So that I have a right to be near you,’ he said, ‘which is all that I want.’ He spoke lightly enough, as was his habit; but Estella, who was wise in those matters that women know, preferred not to meet his eyes, which were grave and deep. ‘Such things are quickly said,’ Estella retorted. ‘Yes—and it takes a long time to prove them.’ The General had left his gloves on the table. Estella took them up and appeared to be interested in them. ‘Perhaps a lifetime,’ she suggested. ‘I ask no less, señorita.’ ‘Then you ask much.’ ‘And I give all—though that is little enough.’ They spoke slowly—not bandying words but exchanging thoughts. Estella was grave. Conyngham’s attitude was that which he ever displayed to the world—namely, one of cheerful optimism, as behoved a strong man who had not yet known fear. ‘Is it too little, señorita?’ he asked. She was sitting at the table and would not look up—neither would she answer his question. He was standing quite close to her—upright in his bright uniform, his hand on his sword—and all her attention was fixed on the flowers which had called forth the General’s unspoken admiration. She touched them with fingers hardly lighter than his. ‘Now that I think of it,’ said Conyngham after a pause, ‘what I give is nothing.’ Estella’s face wore a queer little smile, as of a deeper knowledge. ‘Nothing at all,’ continued the Englishman. ‘For I have nothing to give, and you know nothing of me.’ ‘Three months ago,’ answered Estella, ‘we had never heard of you—and you had never seen me,’ she added, with a little laugh. ‘I have seen nothing else since,’ Conyngham replied deliberately; ‘for I have gone about the world a blind man.’ ‘In three months one cannot decide matters that affect a whole lifetime,’ said the girl. ‘This matter decided itself in three minutes, so far as I am concerned, señorita, in the old palace at Ronda. It is a matter that time is powerless to affect one way or the other.’ ‘With some people; but you are hasty and impetuous. My father said it of you—and he is never mistaken.’ ‘Then you do not trust me, señorita?’ Estella had turned away her face so that he could only see her mantilla and the folds of her golden hair gleaming through the black lace. She shrugged her shoulders. ‘It is not due to yourself, nor to all who know you in Spain, if I do,’ she said. ‘All who know me?’ ‘Yes,’ she continued; ‘Father Concha, Señora Barenna, my father, and others at Ronda.’ ‘Ah! And what leads them to mistrust me?’ ‘Your own actions,’ replied Estella. And Conyngham was too simple-minded, too inexperienced in such matters, to understand the ring of anxiety in her voice.