“Oh!” said Steptoe, softened into a rough apology. “I forgot. All right. Has he had any visitors lately—lady, for instance?”
Father Dominico cast a look half of fright, half of reproval upon his guest.
“A lady HERE!”
In his relief Steptoe burst into a coarse laugh. “Of course; you see I forgot that, too. I was thinking of one of his woman folks, you know—relatives—aunts. Was there any other visitor?”
“Only one. Ah! we know the senor's rules regarding his son.”
“One?” repeated Steptoe. “Who was it?”
“Oh, quite an hidalgo—an old friend of the child's—most polite, most accomplished, fluent in Spanish, perfect in deportment. The Senor Horncastle surely could find nothing to object to. Father Pedro was charmed with him. A man of affairs, and yet a good Catholic, too. It was a Senor Van Loo—Don Paul the boy called him, and they talked of the boy's studies in the old days as if—indeed, but for the stranger being a caballero and man of the world—as if he had been his teacher.”
It was a proof of the intensity of the father's feelings that they had passed beyond the power of his usual coarse, brutal expression, and he only stared at the priest with a dull red face in which the blood seemed to have stagnated. Presently he said thickly, “When did he come?”
“A few days ago.”
“Which way did Eddy go?”