‘Ah!’ said Sir John, as if he knew too much about it to give an opinion. And he took his leave.
‘That is the sort of woman to break one’s heart in the witness box,’ he said as he passed out into the deserted street, and Señora Barenna, in the great room with the armour, reflected complacently that the English lord had been visibly impressed.
General Vincente and Estella arrived at the hotel in the evening, but did not of course appear in the public rooms. The dusty old travelling carriage was placed in a quiet corner of the courtyard of the hotel, and the General appeared on this, as on all occasions, to court retirement and oblivion. Unlike many of his brothers-in-arms, he had no desire to catch the public eye.
‘There is doubtless something astir,’ said the waiter, who, in the intervals of a casual attendance on Sir John, spoke of these things, cigarette in mouth. ‘There is doubtless something astir, since General Vincente is on the road. They call him the Stormy Petrel, for when he appears abroad there usually follows a disturbance.’
Sir John sent his servant to the General’s apartment about eight o’clock in the evening asking permission to present himself. In reply, the General himself came to Sir John’s room.
‘My dear sir,’ he cried, taking both the Englishman’s hands in an affectionate grasp, ‘to think that you were in the hotel and that we did not dine together. Come, yes, come to our poor apartment, where Estella awaits the pleasure of renewing your acquaintance.’
‘Then the señorita,’ said Sir John, following his companion along the dimly-lighted passage, ‘has her father’s pleasant faculty of forgetting any little contretemps of the past?’
‘Ask her,’ exclaimed the General in his cheery way. ‘Ask her.’ And he threw open the door of the dingy salon they occupied.
Estella was standing with her back to the window, and her attitude suggested that she had not sat down since she had heard of Sir John’s presence in the hotel.
‘Señorita,’ said the Englishman, with that perfect knowledge of the world which usually has its firmest basis upon indifference to criticism, ‘señorita, I have come to avow a mistake and to make my excuses.’