For a moment none moved. There was Chitta, groveling on the stone floor of the circular room, her face hidden in her hands; there was Vitoria, her arms outstretched, struck rigid in the act of repulsing Cartaret; and there were the two men--the American white, but determined and unafraid; the Basque with a dull red spreading on his tanned cheeks--facing each other as pugilists, entering the ring, face each other at pause during the fleeting instant before they begin to circle for an opening. Cartaret, with the eye that, in times of high emotion, takes account of even trivial detail, noted how Don Ricardo, who had been forced to stoop in order to pass the doorway, gradually straightened himself with a slow, unconscious expansion of the muscles such as a tiger might employ. Vitoria was the first to speak: she lowered her arms and turned upon her brother a glance of which the pride proved that her self-possession was regained. She spoke in English, though whether for Cartaret's comprehension, for the servant's mystification, or as an added gibe at Ricardo, the American was unable to determine. "You came unannounced, brother," she said. "I am not accustomed to such entrances." The red deepened over Don Ricardo's high cheek-bones, but he bit his lip and seemed to bite down his rage. "These are not your apartments, Doña Dolorez," he said, adopting, with visible repugnance, the language she employed. "And I am the head of your house." He bent his gray eyes on Cartaret. "Be so good as to come with me, sir," he said. He stood aside from the door. "I follow after my guest." Cartaret's heart had place only for the last words that Vitoria had said to him. He would not look at her again, and he cared little what might happen to himself, so long as he could draw this irate brother after him and away from the endangered women. Vitoria had said that she hated him: well, he would do what he could to save her, and then leave Alava forever. He passed through the door.... "He is my guest," he heard Don Ricardo saying. "An Eskurola remembers the laws of hospitality." Cartaret went on to the court-yard. There his host followed him. "Will you come to my offices?" he asked. He walked across to the north wing of the castle and into a large room that looked upon the terrace. The ceiling was a mass of blackened rafters; the walls, wainscoted in oak, were hung with ancient arms and armor, with the antlers of deer and the stuffed heads of tusked boar, and with some rags of long-faded tapestry. There was a yawning fire-place at one end, between high bookshelves filled with leather-bound folios, and, near one of the windows, stood an open Seventeenth Century desk massed with dusty papers. Eskurola waved his guest to a stiff-backed chair. Cartaret, seeing that Don Ricardo intended to remain standing, merely stood beside it.