“Oh, nothing,” he said, soothingly. “Perhaps we can see Toledo in a moment.”
Mr. Moulton met them at the station. His face was flushed and his manner perturbed, but he shook their hands cordially and protested that he had never been so glad to lay eyes on any one.
“Let us walk up,” said Catalina, and she strode on ahead. The men followed, Mr. Moulton talking with nervous volubility.
“Of course I did not blame you, my dear Catalina,” he reiterated. “Such a contretemps in Spain is easy enough. Mrs. Moulton is still a little upset, but you know what—er—invalids are, and I beg you to be patient—”
“It won’t worry me in the least. But why this change of front? Why didn’t you come to Baeza?”
“That wretched peasant saw us as I was craning my neck looking for you, and reached the train in three bounds. Of course, we were safe in the first-class carriage, and at Alcazar I had a brilliant idea. We drove to the hotel, as usual, with all our baggage, and that mountebank—I shall never pronounce his impious name—supposed we were settled for the night. After dinner I told the landlord—through the kind medium of a Frenchman who spoke both English and Spanish—that, being much annoyed by this creature, we had determined to change our itinerary and go direct to Madrid where we could call upon our minister to protect us. We then took the night train and were under way a good hour before it was time for the man to appear with his guitar. I even bought tickets for Madrid, and as we changed cars at midnight we were practically unobserved. We are very comfortable, and are in time for a grand fête.”
“How is Lydia?” Catalina asked, dryly.
“The poor child is very nervous, but most thankful to be rid of the man. By-the-way, I telegraphed as soon as I arrived in Toledo.”
“This is Spain,” said Over.
The hint of Mrs. Moulton’s displeasure had fallen on heedless ears. They were crossing the Alcantara Bridge that leads through the ancient gateway of the same name up to one of the most beautiful cities to look upon in the world. Toledo, the lofty outpost of the range of mountains behind the raging Tagus, is an almost perpendicular mass of rock on all sides but one, its uneven plateau crowded with palaces and churches, tiny plazas and narrow, winding streets, a mere roof of tiles from the Alcazar, which stands on its highest point, but from below a wild yet symmetrical outcropping of the rock itself. Founded, so runs the legend, by a son of Noah, certainly the ancient capital of the Goths and the scene of much that was terrible and romantic in their history, a stronghold of the Moors, who left here as elsewhere their indelible imprint, and later of the sovereigns of Castile, equally inaccessible from the vega and the defile of the Tagus, it was one of the most impregnable cities in history so long as a man was left to dispute the gates on the steep road rising from the plain. It is to-day a sarcophagus of ancient history, compact, isolated, little disturbed by the outer world, yet with an intense and vivid life of its own.