At last, when she was making up her mind to something very desperate indeed, though what form this desperate something should take she could not determine, there fell on her ears, coming nearer and nearer, the sound of deep sobbing. A few moments later the little green door, opening slowly, revealed two figures, that of Mrs. Robinson, pale and moved, but otherwise looking much as usual, and that of a stout, middle-aged woman, dressed in black, who, crying bitterly, clung to her, seeming loth to let her go. Very gently, and not till they were actually standing on the pavement outside the open door, did Penelope disengage herself from the trembling hands which sought to keep her. Motey did not understand the words, 'Mon pauvre enfant, il vous aime tant! Vous reviendrez demain, n'est ce pas, madame?' but she understood enough to say no word of her long waiting, to give voice to no grumbling, as she and her mistress walked slowly down the sunny street, after having seen the little green door shut behind the short, homely figure, lacking all dignity save that of grief. In those days, as Mrs. Mote, sitting up there remembering in the darkness, recalled with bitterness, Mrs. Robinson had had no confidante but her old nurse, and Penelope had instantly begun pouring out, as was her wont, the tale of all that had happened in the hour she had been away. 'Oh, Motey, that is his poor mother! It is so horribly sad. He is her only child. Her husband was killed in the Franco-Prussian War when she was quite a young woman, and she has given up her whole life to him. Now the poor fellow is dying'--Penelope shuddered--'and I have promised to go and see him every day till he does die.' III It was with no feeling of pity that Mrs. Mote now turned in her own mind to the second episode. A journey to Madrid in search of pictured dons and high hidalgos had led Mrs. Robinson to make the acquaintance of a Spanish gentleman, a certain Don José Moricada; and the old Englishwoman, with her healthy contempt of extravagance of behaviour and language, could now smile grimly as she evoked the striking individuality of the man who had given her the worst quarter of an hour she had ever known. At the time of their first meeting Don José had seemed to Penelope to embody in his single person all the qualities which may be supposed to have animated the noble models whose good fortune it was to be immortalized by Velasquez; indeed, he ultimately proved himself possessed to quite an inconvenient degree of the passion and living fervour which the great artist, who was of all painters Penelope's most admired master, could so subtly convey.