"Can't you try and see what all this has meant to me?" she asked wildly, ignoring my question. "What I suffered when I knew that Sebastian meant to ruin you, to involve you in this terrible Carlist business, to have you proclaimed as Ferdinand Carbonnell, the desperate Carlist leader, imprisoned and sent Heaven alone knew where, to suffer the fate and the punishment which such a man would rightly suffer? What could I do but step in to save you? You know his reluctance, the struggle we had, the wild words he spoke of your ruining him, and then how he broke his pledged word to me? And yet to save you meant to ruin him! Holy Mother of God, what was I to do?" and she wrung her hands. "I could not see you wronged in this way; and yet as my reward am I to see him dragged down, his reputation destroyed, his position degraded, his very name a foulness in the mouths of the populace? Is this your English sense of honour and recompense? No, no, I don't mean that. I know you are just and honourable. I am crazed with my trouble to speak such words to you."
"Where is your brother?"
"I do not know. You drove him to desperation last night. He left this house almost directly you had gone; and returned late, and was gone again this morning before I could get word with him. He is like a mad-man; and what he will do in his madness, who can tell?" The fears that lay beneath her wild words were the same as had been pressing so keenly on me, yet what to do to avert them was more than I could see.
"If you do not know where he is, what can we do?" I asked.
"Give me those compromising papers, and let me find him and prove that the danger he fears is at an end? He will then do anything you ask. You do not know him. He is stern, hard, implacable when opposed, but he is not dead to feelings of generosity. An act like that would touch him to the core, and he would do anything you asked—nay, let me know what it is you wish, and I would pledge myself that he would do it." She pleaded urgently and almost imploringly, but I could not yield.
"I cannot do that. Only last night he likened this struggle between us to a duel, and you would ask me to disarm myself and throw away the only means by which I can hope to win my way. I am sorry, deeply and sincerely sorry, but this is impossible."
"You would see him dragged into the dirt for the rabble to spit upon!" Her changing mood, as she was swayed first by thoughts for me and then by those for her brother, was painful to witness.
"He did not hesitate to have me treated as a criminal, senorita; he has set me at defiance and refused everything I asked; and I cannot put myself and others at his mercy. But I will do this. Let him set Sarita Castelar free, and stay this Carlist persecution, and I will give up the documents he fears, and say nothing of what I know. More than that I cannot offer you; and even that must depend upon the senorita being free before I am placed in a position which compels me to take action against him."
"What does that mean? How long will you give me? I must have time to find him. I cannot do anything without time. You are iron to me in your madness for this girl."
"Unfortunately I am not free to name any time." I was not. I did not yet know what measures Mayhew had taken, and whether he had communicated with the Palace. My summons to the King might come at any hour, and I was compelled to hold myself free to speak all I knew with regard to Quesada in my interview there. At the same time Dolores' acute distress of mind, and the knowledge of what she had done for me, filled me with a desire to help her; while personally, I was anxious to get Sarita from Quesada's grip at the earliest possible moment, and to leave Spain. Under pressure of these thoughts, I added: "This I can assure you, I would far rather the matter ended as you wish, and will give you every possible moment of time."