"There is a carrier, Princess, who passes here twice a week, about nightfall. He reaches Corbo at eleven. To-morrow is his next journey. I will see that he takes your letter."
"And you will come and sit with me, Teresa—we have much to talk over, haven't we? It will do you good, dear. Do not let them see down-stairs that you have been crying. For the present you must keep our secret."
When Teresa had left the room, Galva crossed over, and leaning her elbows on the mantelpiece looked long and searchingly at herself in the mirror.
CHAPTER XX
THE BOAT FROM THE MAINLAND
If the days hung heavily upon the heart of the captive in the castle on the Alcador road, they hung no less heavily upon the man who waited in Venta Villa.
The culpability of one's actions is too often determined by the worldly success, or otherwise, which attends them, and Edward Povey was experiencing some very bitter moments. Had Galva been firmly and happily seated in the great throne-room up there in the Palace, he would have carried his head high and have looked upon himself as a hero, and his usurpation of the character of Sydney Kyser as a meritorious act.
But under the existing circumstances he cursed himself for a meddlesome idiot, or worse, and prayed that he might suddenly awake to find himself dozing over the corner desk in the dingy Eastcheap counting-house or in his shabby arm-chair in the front room at Belitha Villas.
Hitherto he had accepted his present luxurious surroundings as due to him for the trouble he was taking; now each item of them became a stab. The well-cooked dinners which he took miserably with Anna Paluda seemed like to choke him, and the dainty hangings of his little bedroom, overlooking the bay, became a physical torture to him. The letter sent him by Jasper Jarman also rankled deeply. He wished he had kept the letter now, that he might read it again and again as a penance.