The next morning, she had seen a man digging in the little vegetable patch, a coarse, black-browed, evil-faced fellow. Galva remembered having seen the same type of man, with their closely-cropped heads, among the loafers outside the bull-rings in Madrid, and she knew their reputation. She drew back into the room, and for the first time since her capture, her heart failed her. Where were her friends, and why did they not come to her?
Her mind flew, in its need, to the Duc de Choleaux Lasuer, and she told herself, and thrilled at the telling, that he would rush to her assistance did he know. He had asked her on that last day in Paris to write to him, should she be in any trouble, and she, seeing no clouds in her future, had laughed at him. Now she shut her eyes and saw again the eager boyish face, and she knew what a big place he had in her heart.
She threw herself down on the great bed and buried her face in the pillow. The tears that came were the first she had shed and they relieved her. The knowledge that all escape by force was impossible took from her the thoughts that had buoyed her up. Now, she could not tell how many there were against her, and she knew that the man she had seen in the garden was not one to be cowed by a girl with a toy pistol.
She sat up and dried her eyes. What could not be done one way, must be done another. She must think out some scheme, some subterfuge to gain her release. If only she could get a letter or a message sent to Venta Villa. The high road ran only a hundred yards from her window, but the hundred yards might be miles for all the use they were, so securely was her retreat hidden. Of the imaginary accident and of her supposed death she of course knew nothing.
After this the days passed with a dull monotony. The prisoner, seeing that no good was to be expected of it, dropped her bantering tone with the old people. No longer were her meals served to her at the pistol point. For hours together she would sit, a pathetic little figure, in the great arm-chair which she had pulled into the embrasure of one of the windows, not even turning her head when Pieto or his wife entered. She would sit there gazing out across the tree-tops to the arid plains and the wild desolation of the distant hills. There were dark circles showing now under the beautiful eyes, and sometimes the meals were taken away again untasted.
And then a little gleam of hope came to her. Since her first arrival at the little castle she had noticed the covert looks, half admiration, half fear, with which Teresa had regarded her. Twice, too, she had seen that the old woman had been on the point of saying something that was in her mind, but each time she had checked herself and broken off with a sigh. One day Galva spoke to her.
It was a dull and miserable morning, with a fine rain that lashed and blurred the windowpanes, and a high wind moaned through the trees of the forest, swaying their topmost branches. Teresa was leaving the room with the scarcely touched breakfast when Galva laid a gentle hand on her arm.
"Teresa," she whispered.
The dame stopped and looked at her. Galva thought she saw compassion in the beady black eyes.
"Teresa—you are a woman and have a heart. I have seen your heart sometimes in your eyes, when you look at me. Have you no pity there for me? All this is killing me—I am ill, Teresa—I have lived my life in the open air of God's green world, and this," with a despairing gesture that took in all the room, "is weighing on me—killing—crushing me."