‘By the side door in the Calle de la Ciudad. The keeper of that door, Excellency, is a mule. The señorita forced him to admit her. The sex can do so much,’ he added, with a tolerant shrug of the shoulders.
‘And the other—this Larralde?’
Concepçion raised his hand with outspread fingers, and shook it slowly from side to side from the wrist, with the palm turned towards his interlocutor—a gesture which seemed to indicate that the subject was an unpleasant, almost an indelicate, one.
‘Larralde, Excellency,’ he said, ‘is one of those who are never found at the front. He will not be in Toledo to-night—that Larralde.’
‘Where is the Señorita Barenna?’ asked the General.
‘She is downstairs—commanding his Excellency’s soldiers to let her pass.’
‘You go down, my friend, and bring her here. Then take that door yourself.’
Concepçion bowed ceremoniously and withdrew. He might have been an ambassador, and his salutation was worthy of an Imperial Court.
A moment later Julia Barenna came into the room, her dark eyes wide with terror, her face pale and drawn.
‘Where is the Queen Regent?’ she asked, looking from one face to the other, and seeing all her foes assembled as if by magic before her.