At this moment Estella came back into the room ready for her journey. The girl had changed of late. Her face had lost a little roundness and had gained exceedingly in expression. Her eyes, too, were different. That change had come to them which comes to all women between the ages of twenty and thirty, quite irrespective of their state. A certain restlessness, or a quiet content, are what one usually sees in a woman’s face. Estella’s eyes wore that latter look, which seems to indicate a knowledge of the meaning of life and a contentment that it should be no different.
Vincente was writing at the table.
‘We shall want help,’ he said, without looking up. ‘I am sending for a good man.’
And he smiled as he shook the small sand-castor over the paper.
‘May one ask,’ said Concha, ‘where we are going?’
‘We are going to Ciudad Real, my dear friend, since you are so curious. But we shall come back—we shall come back.’
He was writing another despatch as he spoke, and at a sign from him Estella went to the door and clapped her hands, the only method of summoning a servant in general use at that time in Spain. The call was answered by an orderly, who stood at attention in the doorway for a full five minutes while the General wrote further orders in his neat, small calligraphy. There were half a dozen letters in all—curt military despatches without preamble and without mercy. For this soldier conducted military matters in a singularly domestic way, planning his campaigns by the fireside and bringing about the downfall of an enemy while sitting in his daughter’s drawing-room. Indeed, Estella’s blotting-book bore the impress of more than one death warrant or an order as good as such, written casually on her stationery and with her pen.
‘Will you have the goodness to despatch these at once?’ was the message taken by the orderly to the General’s aide-de-camp, and the gallopers, who were always in readiness, smiled as they heard the modest request.
‘It will be pleasant to travel in the cool of the evening, provided that one guards against a chill,’ said the General, making his final preparations. ‘I require but a moment to speak to my faithful aide-de-camp, and then we embark.’
The moon was rising as the carriage rattled across the Bridge of Alcantara, and Larralde, taking the air between Wamba’s Gate and the little fort that guards the entrance to the city, recognised the equipage as it passed him. He saw also the outline of Concha’s figure in the darkest corner of the carriage, with his back to the horses, his head bowed in meditation. Estella he saw and recognised, while two mounted attendants clattering in the rear of the carriage testified by their presence to the fact that the General had taken the road again.