"You don't know?" and her eyes lighted quickly.
"No, I don't know—but I suspect. Tell me, however."
"What do you suspect?"
"To question is scarcely to trust, Sarita. I suspect that it is some secret password among you Carlists."
"But how could it come to your ears?" she cried, anxiously.
"Should not Ferdinand Carbonnell be trusted by his followers?"
"Someone has heard your name, has seen you and has mistaken you—oh, Ferdinand, I might have expected it, but scarcely yet. Wait; yes, I know. It will have been Vidal de Pelayo. He has been here from Saragossa: he may have heard your name—ah, I see it was he. And did he come to you—where? Tell me everything." Her speech was as rapid as her deductions were quick and shrewd.
"Yes, it was Vidal de Pelayo;" and I told her generally what had passed at the interview, keeping back for the moment that part of it which referred to the abduction plot. She listened with rapt attention, viewing it much more seriously than I did; as was not, perhaps, unreasonable. "And now, what does that absurdly-sounding phrase mean?"
"You have only half of it."
"You mean, 'By the grace of God;' but that only makes it all the odder."