"You are a devoted wife," said the Penitent admiringly. "Would it alter your devotion at all to know that he was with another woman?"
"No," answered Ruth. "I knew it, in fact." She wondered that this beggar man could force her to speak so frankly.
"In an earthquake," said he, "one gets down to naked truth, or near to it. If he were unfaithful now—would that alter your desire to find and save him?"
"Sir, why do you ask these things?"
"Did your Excellency not know that its beggars are the eyes of
Lisbon? But you have not answered me."
"Nor will. That I am here—is it not enough?"
The Penitent peered at her in the dim light and nodded. He led her forward a pace or two and pointed to something imbedded in a pile of stones, lime, rubble. It was the wreck of a chaise. Two males lay crushed under it, their heads and a couple of legs protruding. A splintered door, wrenched from its hinges, lay face-uppermost crowning the heap. It bore a coronet and the arms of Montalegre.
"Are they—" she stammered, but caught at her voice and recovered it.
"—Are they here, under this?"
"No," he said, and again led the way, crossing the street to a house of which the upper storey overhung the street, supported by a line of pillars. Three or four of these pillars had fallen. Of the rest, nine out of ten stood askew, barely holding up the house, through the floors of which stout beams had thrust themselves and stuck at all angles from the burst plaster.
"Here is Milord Vyell," said the Penitent, picking up a broken lath and pointing with it.