"Is it still true," she asked, "that their ... their suitors come and stand under the windows at night, for hours at a time, with guitars?"
"Not always with guitars," explained Antonio, "but the rest is still true. If you want a senhorita you must stand under her window, night after night, for months, wet or fine. When her window is on the third floor you get a crick in the neck."
"But what do they talk about?"
"Nothing. They make eyes."
Her questions ceased, and the monk hoped that they were finished with a risky topic. Suddenly, however, she turned upon him and blurted out:
"Do you have to crick your neck for Margarida?"
Antonio jumped. The question struck him entirely dumb. Margarida! At first he could only stare at the questioner blankly. Then his stung pride made itself felt. The blank stare gave place to a flash of indignation. Her eyes quailed before the angry fires in his.
"No," he said, slowly and coldly. "I do not have to crick my neck for Margarida."
Isabel's face showed that she was troubled and almost frightened at what she had done. But he made no haste to condone her offense. He was capable of forgiving the injury almost as soon as it was committed; but he could not so easily surmount his disappointment at hearing anything like indelicacy from her lips. Graver still was this sudden revelation that Isabel did, after all, think thoughts of him as a lover and a marrying man. And it gradually dawned upon him that there had been something nervous in her gaiety from the moment of her bringing the Crowberry's letters. He understood at last that she had come determined to probe him with her sudden question.
He got up and moved away a few yards to a point from which he could see the Atlantic; and there he stood, taking scrupulous counsel with himself. Was it or was it not his duty to make a fresh draft upon the candor with which he had ended the match-making of Senhor Jorge? No. It was not. Yet something had to be done. What hint ought he to drop, or what counter-stroke ought he to deliver? For one foolish half-moment he almost entertained a mean plan of letting Isabel believe that there was indeed something between himself and Margarida.