"Señor Don Andrea, you know too much—thanks to my friend here," said the dark man slowly.
"But we are not assassins," put in the youngster. "Renegade though you be, Don Andrea, I give you your chance." He snatched the foil from his senior's hand and presented it solemnly, hilt foremost, to Fuentes.
"Youth—youth!" murmured Fuentes with an appreciative laugh, as he tucked the foil under his arm, took off his spectacles and rubbed them, laughing again. He readjusted them carefully and, saluting, fell on guard. "I am at your service, Sir."
The youth stepped forward hotly, touched blades, and almost immediately lunged. An instant later his sword, as though it had been a bird released from his hand, flew over his shoulder into the twilight behind.
"That was ill-luck for you, Señor," said Fuentes lowering his point. "But who can be sure of himself in this confounded twilight?" He swung half-about towards the river-wall, with a glance across at the city, where already a few lights began to twinkle in the dusk. And, so turning, he seemed on a sudden to catch his breath.
And almost on that instant the youngster, who had fallen back disconcerted, sprang forward in a fresh fury and gripped his comrade by the arm, pointing excitedly towards a group of houses above the fortifications, whence from a high upper storey, deeply recessed between flanking walls, a light redder than the rest twinkled across to us.
"The proof!" cried he. "She knew you would be here, and that is the proof! You at least I will kill before I leave this garden, as I came to kill you to-night."
In his new gust of fury he seemed to have forgotten his discomfiture—to have forgotten even the existence of Fuentes, who now faced them both with a smile which (unless the dusk distorted it) had some bitterness in its raillery.
"If I mistake not, Sirs, the light you were discussing signals to us from an upper chamber in the Lesser Street of the Virgins. It can only be seen from this garden and from the far end of it, where we now stand. I will not ask you who lights it now: but she who lit it in former days was named Luisa. Oh yes, she was circumspect—a good maid then, and no doubt a good maid now: in that street of the Virgins there was at least one prudent. Youth flies, ay de mi! But youth also, as I perceive to-night, repeats itself; and Luisa—who was always circumspect, though a conspirator—apparently repeats herself too."