SEÑOR LUAZO,
Calle Mendaro, 66,
Corbo,
and set out at full length the history of Mr. Baxendale's find in the wood. Not an item of evidence had been overlooked that could prove the truth of Miranda's parentage. The jewellery comprised two or three rings and a brooch, engraved with the royal arms. These Anna had snatched up in their hurried flight from the palace.
The princess read to the end, but there was nothing that she had not already learnt from her foster-mother. On the arrival of Edward's letter, two days previous, Anna had told her charge the whole history. To her mind, the evidence was not as complete as she might have wished. She tried to look at it with the eyes of strangers, to whom the story of the substitution of the children might suggest a plot.
They discussed the matter in all its bearings. The love of adventure and the call of romance appealed strongly to the eighteen-year-old girl, and made the suggested journey a very desirable thing. They would go to Señor Luazo in the Calle Mendaro, and place the whole facts of the affair before him. There could be no harm in that. They would travel under the names of Mr. Sydney and Miss Baxendale, his ward, and, with the money at their disposal, could stay in Corbo and see how the land lay. There would be nothing in their appearance or manner to single them out from the other families who wintered in the little white villas that bordered the beautiful bay of Lucana, which was fast rivalling Monte Carlo as a pleasure resort. The names Galva and Baxendale would suggest nothing. The girl had dropped her real name of Miranda for so long; she could do so for a few months more.
The cottage in Cornwall need not be given up; some woman in the village could easily be found to look after it during their absence. In the mean time, Mr. Sydney (as Edward must now be called) must bring his traps from Penzance and stay with them at Morna Cottage.
*****
It was late afternoon, and the two women were taking a last walk on the carn above the house in which they had lived so long. The scene around them was magnificent in the extreme. Away to the west sea and sky were stained with the afterglow of the setting sun. Around them the desolate moors stretched out in gentle undulations, shadowy and mysterious. In the clear twilight the lights of the coast shone out; below them, the four flashes of Pendeen, and, further up the shore, Godrevy and Trevose flickered uncertainly to the distant sight. In a little while it would be dark enough to make out the light on the Scilly Islands, blinking like a great red eye over the Atlantic.
The village in the valley was fast merging into the dusk; here and there a yellow light twinkled from a window. Miranda grew sad as she looked.
"It is all so beautiful, Anna, and I have been so happy here. I fear sometimes at the journey we are taking—perhaps we will never see all this again, and I love every stone of Tremoor."
Anna Paluda placed her arm tenderly round the young shoulders.