CHAPTER XV
THE ABBOT OF SAN JUAN
The two weeks which followed constituted, I have no hesitation in saying, the gala fortnight of my existence.
I never could have imagined it possible that so much pleasure could have been crowded into such a short time. But can it not be easily believed that everything then was to me gilded with that supreme fine gold, the glamour of a young love? Yes, I think even the old Don himself saw it, and at any rate did not forbid it.
I went about with Dolores everywhere, even to church, at which she was a regular attendant, and I flatter myself behaved very creditably there, for though I was not a Roman Catholic like herself, yet I had attended the Sunday evening ministrations of the monks of Bath, and knew a good deal about it through the said monks' discourses.
I hope I don't make a mistake in calling them monks—if I do, I ask their pardon. I certainly understood them to say they were monks.
Be that as it may. I did not disgrace Dolores when I went with her to the great cathedral in Valoro.
But our time there was by no means entirely spent in going to church. Day after day the old Don engaged special trains in which we flew about the Republic faring sumptuously everywhere, and on our return there would generally be a dinner-party, followed by the theatre or the opera—a magnificent house and performance—and as likely as not a ball after that. Much more of it would have killed us all.
But the gay life mercifully drew towards a close, and Dolores and I began to contemplate a pleasurable voyage back on that very ship on which we had first met and loved.
Yes, loved; we were plighted lovers now; there was no secret, no hiding anything from one another.