Sarita, the Carlist

by Arthur W. Marchmont

"No, I cannot waste a minute."

"Waste," she cried, with a shrug. "If this thing's bad enough to shake you out of your manners, it must be bad. But I don't think you need be quite so frank in calling it waste of time to wait for us."

"I beg your pardon; I didn't mean that. I mustn't delay."

"That's better; and we won't delay you. But, say, I'll make a bargain with you. It'll be just an awful rush for me to catch any train to-night, and if you'll give me till to-morrow morning, we'll go by the day boat and travel special right through from Paris to Madrid. When a lone widow woman's going silver mine hunting, I suppose it will run to a special train anyhow. And I just love the fuss it makes."

I demurred on the ground of the expense, the trouble, and the possible difficulties of making the arrangements; but she laughed them airily away.

"My dear Mr. Ferdinand, I can fix it up in an hour. One thing I did learn from poor A.B.C., and that was the power of dollars. You can have anything on a railway if you'll only pay for it; and a member of the Madrid Embassy travelling hot-foot to Madrid with his sister and her friend could have twenty specials in twenty minutes, for a due consideration. It's a bargain then? I must be off, Mercy, dearest. Whoop, but we'll scoop some fun in—I beg your pardon, I forgot. But it'll do you good to get out of this gloomy old house, dear, and there is no sin in a laugh or two. And if we don't enjoy our jaunt, may I never have another. Look here, to-morrow ten o'clock at Charing Cross, special to Dover. Good-bye," and she was gone.

"You'll have to marry her, Nand," said Mercy. "And she really is a dear, honest-hearted thing; as good as she is indefatigable and energetic."

"I can do better than marry her, I can find her a husband who can give her what she wants—some love in return." And I was thinking of Silas Mayhew. But the other matters were clamouring for my thoughts just then. Sarita, and the troubles and dangers she was coiling round herself; the plot against the young King; the part I meant to play in it all; and in the background the grim, stern, menacing face of Sebastian Quesada—the thoughtful face of the master at the chess board, moving each piece with deliberate intent, working steadily with set plan as he lured his opponents forward till the moment came to show his hand and strike.

The idea took such possession of me that in the short hours of tossing slumber that night I dreamed of it; and in the dream came a revelation which clung to me even when I woke—that in some way, at present inscrutable, unguessable, Quesada knew all that these Carlists were planning, that it was a part of some infinitely subtle scheme which had emanated by devious, untraceable, and secret ways from his own wily brain, and was duly calculated for the furtherance of his limitless, daring ambition.

I was full of the thought when we reached the station at the time appointed and found the indefatigable widow before us. She had made all the arrangements, and was lording it over the officials and impressing upon everyone the critical affairs of State business which impelled the important member of the Madrid Embassy to travel in such hot haste to the Spanish capital.