Estella rose at once; but Julia held her back.
‘No,’ she said; ‘let me do it. Give me the white mantilla.’
There was a momentary silence while Estella freed herself from her cousin’s grasp. Conyngham looked at the woman he loved while she stood, little more than a child, with something youthful and inimitably graceful in the lines of her throat and averted face. Would she accept Julia’s offer? Conyngham bit his lip and awaited her decision. Then, as if divining his thought, she turned and looked at him gravely.
‘No,’ she said; ‘I will do it.’
She went towards the window. Her father and Conyngham had taken their places, one on each side, as if she were the Queen indeed. She stood for a moment on the threshold, and then passed out into the moonlight, alone. Immediately there arose the most terrifying of all earthly sounds—the dull, antagonistic roar of a thousand angry throats. Estella walked to the front of the balcony and stood, with an intrepidity which was worthy of the royal woman whose part she played, looking down on the upturned faces. A red flash streaked the darkness of a far corner of the square, and a bullet whistled through the open window into the woodwork of a mirror.
‘Come back,’ whispered General Vincente. ‘Slowly, my child—slowly.’
Estella stood for a moment looking down with a royal insolence, then turned, and with measured steps approached the window. As she passed in she met Conyngham’s eyes, and that one moment assuredly made two lives worth living.
CHAPTER XXIX
MIDNIGHT AND DAWN
‘I have set my life upon a cast
And I will stand the hazard of the die.’
‘Excellency,’ reported a man who entered the room at this moment, ‘they are bringing carts of fuel through the Calle de la Ciudad to set against the door and burn it.’