"No," answered Sarrion, thoughtfully. "I know nothing." "And Marcos is not with you?" the girl went on gaily. "He would not dare to come within the walls. He is afraid of all nuns. I know he is, though he denies it. Some day, in the holidays, I shall dress as a nun, and you will see. It will frighten him out of his wits." "Yes," said Sarrion looking at her, "I expect it would. Tell me," he went on after a pause, "Do you know this stick?" And he held out, under the rays of the lamp, the sword-stick he had picked up in the Calle San Gregorio. She looked at it and then at him with startled eyes. "Of course," she said. "It is the sword-stick I sent papa for the New Year. You ordered it yourself from Toledo. See, here is the crest. Where did you get it? Do not mystify me. Tell me quickly--is he here? Has he come home?" In her eagerness she laid her hands on his dusty riding coat and looked up into his face. "No, my child, no," answered Sarrion, stroking her hair, with a tenderness unusual enough to be remembered afterwards. "I think not. The stick must have been stolen from him and found its way back to Saragossa in the hand of the thief. I picked it up in the street yesterday. It is a coincidence, that is all. I will write to your father and tell him of it." Sarrion turned away, so that the shade of the lamp threw his face into darkness. He was afraid of those quick, bright eyes--almost afraid that she should divine that he had already telegraphed to Cuba. "I only came to ask you whether you had heard from your father and to hear that you were well. And now I must go." She stood looking at him, thoughtfully pulling at the delicate embroidery of her sleeves, for all that she wore was of the best that Saragossa could provide, and she wore it carelessly, as if she had never known other, and paid little heed to wealth---as those do who have always had it. "I think there is something you are not telling me," she said, with the ever-ready laugh twinkling beneath her dusky lashes. "Some mystery." "No, no. Good-night, my child. Go back to your bed." She paused with her hand on the door, looking back, her face all shaded by her tumbled hair hanging to her waist. "Are you sure you have not heard from papa?" "Quite sure--! I wish I had," he added when the door was closed behind her. CHAPTER IV THE JADE--CHANCE The same evening, by the light of his solitary lamp, in the small room--which had been a lady's boudoir in olden days--the Count de Sarrion sat down to write a letter to his son. He despatched it at once by a rider to Torre Garda, far beyond Pampeluna, on the southern slope of the Pyrenees. "I am growing too old for this work," he said to himself as he sealed the letter. "It wants a younger man. Marcos will do it, though he hates the pavement. There is something of the chase in it, and Marcos is a hunter."