He had no sooner disappeared into the little room, the door of which he left slightly open, when I mentally consigned the green lizards and, in fact, the whole lacertilian family to a place warmer than the plains of Aquazilia in summer even, and sat idly wondering how long it would be before I saw Dolores again.
I distinctly heard the click of a lock as the old gentleman opened the ebony casket, there was a pause and a long silence broken only by the crackling of paper. Then I heard him give a cry of astonishment, and a Spanish exclamation it was—"Madre de Dios!"
An invocation only used on occasions of great excitement.
Then I heard a low muttering as he repeated certain passages, possibly of the letter, to himself, but it was in a foreign language, probably Spanish, and entirely unintelligible to me.
Another pause followed, then the door opened again and Don Juan re-entered the room, but his appearance had entirely changed.
His healthy sunburnt complexion had lost all its colour and was of a leaden hue, his eyes were starting from beneath his bushy eyebrows, and his right hand, as he laid it on the back of a chair, trembled like a leaf in the wind.
"Mr. Anstruther," he said with difficulty, "it will be necessary for me to leave for Europe as soon as possible, for England, for Bath!"
If he had said that he had just made up his mind to go to the moon I could not have been more astonished!
"To England!" I repeated.
"Yes, to England, and that as soon as possible."