“If you go to Paris I will give you a commission. I will go to your lodgings early in the morning; just now I am going to bed, I have a headache.”
Leon saw that he must leave at once.
“Good-bye, good-bye,” he said grasping Pepa’s hands. Their eyes met with a keen glance; she was disappointed at this abrupt leave-taking. Leon looked at the sleeping child and then, with calm self-possession, he went out. He felt a stranger in the suites of rooms as he passed through them; but the pretty nest he had just left was so intimately part of his life that he could hardly forbear from turning back to breathe once more in that atmosphere of peace and contentment—an atmosphere full of the delicious sense of home, hallowed by a woman’s love and a child’s slumbers.
As they parted Don Pedro said:
“I am very uneasy at having heard no details of Federico’s death.”
Leon made no reply; he went out into the garden. There, so many remembrances appealed to his affections that at every step he paused to sigh and dream. He had reached the avenue that led from the gardens to the stables when he heard himself called, with a shrill “hist” that came on his ear as sharp as a dart. He turned and saw Pepa, wrapped in a shawl with her head uncovered, coming towards him in breathless haste. She eagerly grasped his hand.
“I could not bear that we should part like this,” she said, “it is too hard!”
“It is as it ought to be,” replied Leon greatly disturbed. “And what does it matter? I shall come in to-morrow for a moment.”
“For a moment!” cried Pepa in pathetic reproach. “Think what it is to have given years—long years—as long as centuries, and to be repaid with moments!”
Leon took both her hands firmly in his.