“My one hope was in Rafael,” she said. “I was good to him, you remember, when he was ill. And he and I had a great sympathy over Corcito, the dear grey bull. I prayed he'd never forgiven the Duke for that crime, and that he'd still be grateful to me. Well, I looked Rafael straight in the eyes when I said, ‘My brother Cristóbal is in that place, shut up by the Duke, who has broken the spring.’ With all my soul I willed him to understand, and he did. ‘If the señorita chooses to have a strange gentleman for her brother, he is her brother for me,’ is what he said to himself; no more! But what if he hadn't?”
“That's where I should have come in,” remarked Dick.
“What would you have done?” asked Pilar, breathless.
“I don't know,” said Dick. “I only know I should have done it; and that if I had, maybe Carmona wouldn't have been feeling as well as he feels now.”
XVII
Like a Thief in the Night
No longer did the Duke desire our company. He had played his little comedy of good-fellowship, and it was over, though it had not ended according to his hopes. The grey car did its forty-horse best to outdistance us on the way to Madrid, but the road—so good that perhaps we lost nothing in the detour to the Escurial—distributed its favours evenly. We kept close on the Lecomte's flying heels until one of our four cylinders went to sleep, and Ropes had to get down and wake it up by testing the ignition.
Some fellow-motorists would have turned to offer help, but the Lecomte was ever a Levite where we were concerned; and when we were ready to go on, the grey car was not even a speck in the distance. Luckily, however, there was little or no doubt where its occupants would put up.