"She is here, senor, but she is not in the house at this moment. She returned here from her father's, last autumn. The country was so disturbed that it was not right that young women should remain in the villages."
"Will you tell her that a British officer will call to see her, in half an hour, and beg her to remain in until I come?"
"I will tell her, senor."
Terence went at once to a silversmith's, and bought the handsomest set of silver jewelry, such as the peasants wore, that he had in his shop; including bracelets, necklaces, large filigree hairpin and earrings, and various other ornaments.
[Chapter 20]: Salamanca.
"She is a lucky girl, Terence," Ryan said, as they quitted the shop. "She will be the envy of all the peasant girls in the neighbourhood, when she goes to church in all that finery, to be married to her muleteer."
"It has only cost about twenty pounds, and I value my freedom at a very much higher price than that, Dick. If I had not escaped, I should not have been in that affair with Moras that got me my promotion and, at the present time, should be in some prison in France."
"You would not have got your majority, I grant, Terence; but wherever they shut you up, it is morally certain that you would have been out of it, long before this. I don't think anything less than being chained hand and foot, and kept in an underground dungeon, would suffice to hold you."
"I hope that I shall never have to try that experiment, Dicky," Terence laughed; "and now, I think you had better go into this hotel, and order lunch for us both. It is just as well not to attract attention, by two of us riding to that lane. We have not done with Marmont, yet, and it may be that the French will be masters of Salamanca again, before long, and it is just as well not to get the old man or the girl talked about. I will leave my horse here, too. See that both of them get a good feed; they have not had overmuch since we crossed the Aqueda."
As there were a good many British officers in the town, no special attention was given to Terence as he walked along through the street, which was gay with flags. When he reached the house in the lane, the old man was standing at the door.