Little Dolores, how all the men had been wild to have her, but she had loved none but Ramon Garcia alone! So said Manuela Durio, the go-between, the priest's housekeeper, and if any did, she knew. Indeed, there was little told at confession that she did not know. Ramon smiled again, a wicked, knowing smile. For if Manuela owned the legitimate fifty years which qualified her for a place in the Presbytery of Sarria de la Plana, eyes and lips belied her official age. Anyway, she kept the priest's conscience--and--what was more important, she swore that little Dolores loved Ramon Garcia and Ramon Garcia alone. "Caballero! Don Ramon!" He started. He had been thinking of the woman at that very moment, and there was her voice calling him. He turned about. The broad rose-glow had deepened to the smoky ruby of a Spanish gloaming, as it lingered along the western hill-tops. These last shone, in spite of the glowing darkness, with a limpid and translucent turquoise like that of the distant landscape in a Siennese picture. "Don Ramon! wait--I would speak with you!" It was indeed the priest's Manuela who called him, and though his heart hasted forward to Dolores, and overleaped boundaries as a dog leaps a wall, still he could not refuse Manuela. Had she not brought them together at the first? "Ah, Manuela, you are kind--there is good news up at the house, is there not? No ill has befallen the little one?" "What has brought you home so soon?" cried the woman, a touch of impatient eagerness in her tones. "You will frighten Dolores if you blunder it upon her all unshaven and travel-stained like that. Have you no more sense, when you know----?" "Know what? I know nothing!" Ramon slurred his speech in his eagerness. "What is there to know?" Manuela laughed--a little strained sound, as if she had been recovering a shaken equanimity, and was not yet sure of her ground. "You, so long married--five, six months, is it not so--and yet not to know! But a fool is always a fool, Don Ramon, even if he owns a vineyard and a charming young wife ten times too good for him!" "Truth of God!" gasped Ramon, with his favourite oath, "but I did not know. I am the father of all donkeys. But what am I to do, tell me, Manuela? I will obey you!" The woman's countenance suddenly cleared.