He meditated a moment, flicking his polished boot with a riding-whip. "And all the more bitter, that up to this moment I thought it was I who was deceiving her." But the young Don Juan of the Sarrian _cafe_ liked to hold the floor, and with three distinguished cavaliers for listeners, it was something to find a subject of common interest. Besides, who knew whether he might not hear a tale or two to the disadvantage of little Concha Cabezos, who had flouted him so sadly at last carnival and made a score of girls laugh at him upon the open Rambla. "It happened thus," he said, "you have heard of El Sarria the outlaw, on whose head both parties have set a price?" "He was of our village," cried half a dozen at once. It was their one title to respect, indisputable in any company. They began all conversations when they went from home with Ramon Garcia's name, and the statement of the fact that they had known his father. "And a fine old man he was; very gracious and formal and of much dignity." "It happened thus," the youthful dandy went on. "El Sarria came home late one night, and when he arrived at his own gable-end, lo, there by the _reja_, where the inside stairway mounts, was a youth 'plucking the turkey' with his sweetheart through a broken bar, and that apparently with great success. And the fool Ramon, his head being filled with his Dolores, never bethought himself for a moment that there might be another pretty girl in the house besides his wife, and so without waiting either '_Buenos!_' or '_Hola!_'--_click_ went Ramon's knife into the lover's back! Such a pair of fools as they were!" "And did this--this Rafael de Flores die?" asked Etienne, divided between a hope that he had, and a fear that if so he might be balked of his revenge. "Die? No--he was about again before many weeks. But this foolish Ramon took straightway to the hills, because he thought that his wife was false and that he had killed her cousin and lover." And even as Don Juan was speaking these words a young man of a slender form and particularly lithe carriage, dressed in the height of Madrid fashion, walked into the _cafe_ with a smiling flourish of his hat to the company. "A glass of vermuth, Esteban," he said, "and if any of these gentlemen will join me I shall feel honoured. Be good enough to tell them who I am, Gaspar, my friend." "Senor cavalier," said the valiant man of Sarria, planting the butt of his blunderbuss firmly on the ground that he might lean upon it, and as it were more officially make the important introduction, "this is no other than the only son of our rich and distinguished alcalde, Senor Don Rafael de Flores, concerning whom you have already heard some speech."