"He is trying to make a parody on some lines by Cowper, one of our English poets who died thirty or forty years ago," Isabel explained to the bewildered Antonio. "I suppose he means the others have gone back home."
"Our respective sires have verily got them gone," said young Crowberry. And, dropping his affectation, he added, "I don't know how you managed to miss 'em, coming down from the house."
"Why have they gone away?"
"To mix a new mixture. Sir Percy has an idea."
Isabel led the way into the monastery. She entered it with a proprietary air which made the monk suspect that Sir Percy had deceived her and that she believed the place to be wholly paid for. Suspicion became certainty. He felt convinced that this was not a woman who would knowingly lend herself to Sir Percy's bargain with the Visconde.
"Show me one of the monks' cells," she commanded.
Antonio hesitated. The spectacle of a graceful girl tripping along the stern and dark corridors had already given him a slight shock. But the cells! Into whose cell could he take her? Decidedly he had no right to show her any save his own.
To his own they went. The monk could never enter the narrow room without emotion, and he was forced to go to the window to hide his anguish. What if this should prove to be his last entrance? What if Sir Percy should indeed defile and destroy the whole abbey?
"It's actually clean," said Isabel, amazed.
"What did you expect?" asked Antonio, turning round and speaking coldly.