"Very well, sir," Ricardo continued: "one time a lady of our house--it was years upon years ago, when Wellington and the English were here--fell in love, or thought that she did, with a British officer. For an Englishman, his degree was high, but had he been the English King it would have served him nothing among us. Knowing of course that the head of our house would never consent to such a marriage, this lady commanded her most loyal servant to assist in an elopement. Now, the Basque servant must obey her mistress, but also the Basque servant must protect the honor of the house that she has the privilege to serve. This one sought to do both things. She assisted in the elopement and brought the lady to the English camp. Then, thus having been faithful to one duty, she was faithful to the other: before the wedding, she killed both her mistress and herself." He turned quickly. "Sir, I have pressing duties in the valley, and you are too weary to ride with me: my poor house is at your disposal." Cartaret leaned against the parapet and, when his host was out of earshot, whistled softly. "What a delightful _raconteur_," he mused. "I wonder if he meant me to draw any special moral from that bit of family-history." He waited until, a quarter of an hour later, he saw Don Ricardo and two servants ride across the drawbridge and wind their way toward the valley. He waited until the green forest engulfed them. What he was going to do might be questionable conduct in a guest, but there was no time to waste over nice points of etiquette. He was going to find Vitoria. He started for the court-yard. His plan was to accost the first servant that he encountered and mention Chitta's name, but this trouble was saved him. In the shadowy gateway, he found Chitta crouching. She glanced to right and left, saw that they were unobserved, passed beyond a narrow door that opened into the gate, and led Cartaret up a spiral stone staircase to the entrance of a circular room in one of the twin gate-towers. There she turned and left him alone with Vitoria. In the center of that bare room, standing beside one of the bowmen's windows that commanded the approach to the castle, the Lady of the Rose awaited him. For an instant, he scarcely recognized her. She was gowned in a single-piece Basque dress of embroidered silk, closely fitted about her full lithe figure to below the hips, the skirt widening and hanging loosely about her slim ankles. A black silk scarf, in sharp contrast to the embroidery, was sewn to the dress and drawn tightly over the right shoulder, across the bust, and then draped beneath the left hip. But the glory of her blue-black hair was as he had first seen it in the twilight of his far-off studio; the creamy whiteness of her cheeks was just touched with pink, and her blue eyes, under curling lashes, seemed at first the frank eyes that he loved. "Vitoria!" he cried. She drew back. She raised one hand, its pink palm toward him.