“Once we were in Gibraltar, you'd be out of reach if the Duke tried to take revenge,” she said. “Yes, I will go! I love you and I can't give you up again. Oh, Ramón, I never would have promised to marry him, if I hadn't longed to show you that—that I didn't care, and that there was someone who wanted me very much, if you didn't.”
“How like a woman!” I exclaimed, laughing—for I could laugh now.
“He has only kissed my hand,” she went on, “and I hated even that.”
“Yet you're wearing his brooch,” a returning flash of jealousy made me say; “and a mantilla, to please him.”
“The brooch is his mother's. So is the mantilla. She at least has been kind; so I let her put them both on for me to-day, when she asked.”
“Kind? When there's time I'll tell you one or two things. But now there's no time for anything except to take you away.”
“Listen! The Miserere has begun,” she said. “Has it been long? I heard it only now. Can we get out before it's over?”
“Of course we can—though not quite as easily, perhaps, as if the crowd were moving with us. However, we can't afford to wait.”
“What wonderful music!” Monica whispered. “I wish I dared to feel it were blessing us.”
“Yes, feel it so,” I said, and involuntarily was silent to listen [pg 262]for an instant to the melodious flood which swept from aisle to aisle in golden billows. Out from the wave of organ music and men's voices, boyish soprano notes sprayed high, flinging their bright crystals up, up, until they fell, shattered, from the vaulted ceiling of stone.