"I won't," said she. "We will stay here."
"Isabel," he retorted sternly, "we will not stay here. You are mad. The storm has driven you out of your senses. Or perhaps it was the ghost you thought you saw. You must go home this instant. What if you have been missed? What if your servants should find us here? What will Mrs. Baxter say? And what shall I say to your father?"
Until he spoke his last sentence Isabel heard him unmoved; but at the thought of her father the arms which held Antonio weakened. Very slowly she let him go. None the less, she sought to argue. The monk, however, enforced his will. Gripping her arm he marched her almost roughly to the west door, and fumbled for the lock.
"It's no use," she said. "The key is outside. We must stay here."
His only answer was to take her arm again and to lead her through the smaller doorway into the cloister. At the moment of their emerging from the chapel a shaft of lightning lit up a bubbling lake of muddy water, under which lay drowned the cloister garden. Two sides of the cloister itself were also under water.
"I am frightened," she said, with genuine fear, as Antonio drew her into a gloomy corridor. He could feel her shrinking back and trembling; so he threw his arm around her waist and hurried her on. As they passed through the kitchen the uproar of the torrent reminded Antonio of the night of his fight with José. But he did not pause. He threaded passage after passage, room after room, until he had worked round to the little door with the Reading monk's secret lock. His fingers searched among the hidden levers, and at last the door stood open.
Frequent lightning still swept sea and land; but the thunder had dragged its great guns northward and was pounding over Navares. The rain had ceased. The monk, however, did not hurry Isabel over the threshold; for the overarching trees were pouring down water like an aqueduct cracked by an earthquake. He considered earnestly.
"Come," he said, with an abruptness which startled her. "I must wrap you in this cloak."
With much tucking and folding he contrived to wrap his habit about her slender body and to adjust the mantilla over her fragrant hair.
"Now, I suppose, I'm a nun," she laughed.