"It seems as if the name of the place might be one of our lost titles," observed Mr. Rose idly. "And there is the castle to match, on the hillside. Come stroll through the town, my girl, while Lenoir repairs damages."
Smiling, Flavia stepped down beside him, throwing back her silk veils and lifting her fair, almost too delicate face to the Andalusian sunshine. After her stepped a great dog, with the sedate, matter-of-course bearing of a constant attendant.
"I wonder who lives in the castle," she responded to his mood of playfulness. "Our castle. We should dispossess them."
"Lets," proposed her father.
There was an inn in the village, kept by a ravishingly plump landlord of sixty who wore a short velvet jacket. He informed the travellers that the diminutive white castle was not only vacant, but to let, being the property of a mad Englishman who had bought it to live in while writing a book, and having finished the book had departed. Mr. Rose regarded his daughter speculatively.
"We have been going from one place to another for five months, and we have got to put in six more," he said with brief decisiveness. "I mean to stay on this side of the water until fall. Do you want to try living here for a while, or would you rather keep moving?"
"Let us stay here," Flavia voted eagerly. "Dear, I am so tired of hotels."
Mr. Rose studied her as she stood, slim and frail, before him, her large eyes fixed on his.
"I guess we are tired of more than that, you and I," he pronounced. "But I'll run up and see if the place can be made fit to live in. You had better rest here, in the shade; Frederick will take care of you and Lenoir is within call. Here, señor, set a chair here under these trees."
She moved to the seat placed for her by the deferential host, and watched her father's departure up the winding road. They were both thinking of Corrie, lacking whom all places were blank, with whom, in one winter's enthusiasm, they had studied this soft Spanish tongue they now used without him. They had planned a trip to Puerto Rico, then, that never had been taken. But Flavia also was thinking of Allan Gerard—Allan Gerard, who loved Isabel and for whose sake Flavia carried a double sorrow, his and her own. As he had found excuses in his mind for her apparent failure of him, so she on her part never had blamed him for what she considered her own misunderstanding of his purpose. They were not given to the small vice of ready condemnation. There is no comfort in blaming the one loved, where the love is great.