The post arrived at six o'clock; but it brought no letter from Theophilo's father. Luis, with a pale face came to the hospedaria after dinner and broke the news falteringly. Glancing through the window, Antonio saw Theophilo pacing up and down outside. The monk put on his hat and walked into the street.
"Senhor, this is terrible," moaned Theophilo. "There is nothing."
"It is terrible indeed," answered Antonio, smiling. "At half-past two you make me a promise, and at half-past six you break it. Come, remember. Cheer up."
They walked beside him with downcast eyes.
"Come," he said again. "This will never do. Tell me. Does Donna Margarida know what you have been passing through?"
"Thank God, she does not, and she never shall!" cried Theophilo.
"Very well. Let us go to your home and hear some music and be gay. I'm a country booby, and when I visit the town I want to see some life. It is dull in the inn."
Theophilo became voluble in apologies for his negligence. He despatched one of the stable-boys hot-foot to warn the Senhora of their approach and followed with Antonio and Luis. In ten minutes they reached a garish new house, faced all over with colored tiles.
Margarida received her old flame with slight chilliness. Although she had turned thirty-five her good looks were not greatly diminished. With her sat Perpetua, Jorge, Lucia, and Juliana, her four black-eyed children, who were struck dumb by the advent of the handsome stranger. At first the proceedings were dull and frigid enough to remind Antonio of his first visit to Margarida's home. But Luis and Theophilo, in reaction from their days of stress and terror, soon became almost hysterically gay. The guitars came out; and when everyone was tired of singing and strumming fados Antonio devoted himself to the little Jorge and his three tongue-tied sisters. He gradually wooed them out of their shyness by telling them a tale of the buried city of Troja, at the mouth of the Sado. By the time he was half through a revised version of the Three Hunchbacks of Setubal the audience had begun to be more tongue-free than himself; and when he made Perpetua hold the candle so that his clenched left fist and his right-hand fingers and knuckles threw upon the wall a shadow of a long-eared rabbit nibbling a cabbage as big as itself, the house rang with shouts of laughter.
The children were sent to bed at nine, wailing bitterly at their banishment. Theophilo took the guitar and played softly, so as not to keep them awake. He had a sympathetic touch and his music soothed Antonio. Sitting in a great chair, the monk looked round the room and wondered. His conto of reis had gone. In forty hours it would be too late to pay the attorney, and the usurers could be trusted so to foreclose the mortgage as to swindle him out of nearly all he had. Yet, somehow, he was happier than he had been for many a day. For a short while he asked himself if it were not callous to gaze so calmly at the wreck of his life's work. Ought he not to be aching and smarting and bleeding as he had ached and smarted and bled for Isabel? Did he truly care as deeply for the abbey and for the Order as he had cared for her?