They rose and took leave, promising to attend the mass next day. Leon became interested again at once in this side of the question, which was not without a thrill of novelty for him. He had organised and taken part in many interesting and gorgeous ceremonies. But a requiem mass for one's own father must necessarily be unique in the most varied career of religious emotion. He was a little flurried, as a girl is flurried at her first ball, and felt that the eye of the black-letter saints was upon him. He shook hands absent-mindedly with his friends, and was already making mental note of their addition to the number secured for to-morrow's ceremony. He was very earnest about it, and Marcos left him with a sudden softening of the heart towards him, such as the strong must always feel for the weak. "You see," said Sarrion, when they were in the street, "what Evasio Mon has made him. I do not know whether you are disposed to hand over Juanita and her three million pesetas to Evasio Mon as well." Marcos made no reply, but walked on, wrapt in thought. "I must see Juanita," he said, at length, after a long silence, and Sarrion's wise eyes were softened by a smile which flitted across them like a flash of sunlight across a darkened field. "Remember," he said, "that Juanita is a child. She cannot be expected to know her own mind for at least three years." Marcos nodded his head, as if he knew what was coming. "And remember that the danger is imminent--that Evasio Mon is not the man to let the grass grow beneath his feet--that we cannot let Juanita wait... three weeks." "I know," answered Marcos. CHAPTER IX THE QUARRY Sarrion called at the convent school of the Sisters of the True Faith the next morning, and was informed through the grating that the school was in Retreat. "Even I, whose duty it is to speak to you, shall have to perform penance for doing so," said the doorkeeper, in her soft voice through the bars. "Then do an extra penance, my sister," returned Sarrion, "and answer another question. Tell me if the Sor Teresa is within?" "The Sor Teresa is at Pampeluna, and the Mother Superior is here in the school herself. The Sor Teresa is only Sister Superior, you must know, and is therefore subordinate to the Mother Superior." Sarrion was a pleasant-spoken man, and a man of the world. He knew that if a woman has something to tell of another she is not to be frightened into silence by the whole Court of Cardinals and eke, the Pope of Rome himself. So he drew his horse nearer to the forbidding wooden gate, and did not ride away from it until he had gained some scraps of information and saddled the lay sister with a burden of penances to last all through the Retreat.