‘No; their house is on the Cordova road, about half a league from the Customs station.’
Estella was not by nature curious, and asked no questions. Some who knew the Barennas would have been glad to claim acquaintance with General Vincente and his daughter, but could not do so. For the Captain-General moved in a circle not far removed from the Queen Regent herself, and mixed but little in the society of Ronda, where, for the time being, he held a command.
Conyngham required no further information, and in a few moments dismissed the letter from his mind. Events seemed for him to have moved rapidly within the last few days, and the world of roadside inns and casual acquaintance into which he had stepped on his arrival in Spain was quite another from that in which Estella moved at Ronda.
‘I must set out for Madrid in a few days at the latest,’ he said a few moments afterwards; ‘but I shall go against my will, because you tell me that you and your father will not be coming North until the spring.’
Estella shook her head with a little laugh. This man was different from the punctilious aides-de-camp and others who had hitherto begged most respectfully to notify their admiration.
‘And three days ago you did not know of our existence,’ she said.
‘In three days a man may be dead of an illness of which he ignored the existence, señorita. In three days a man’s life may be made miserable or happy—perhaps in three minutes.’
And she looked straight in front of her in order to avoid his eyes.
‘Yours will always be happy, I think,’ she said, ‘because you never seem to go below the surface, and on the surface life is happy enough.’
He made some light answer, and they walked on beneath the orange trees, talking of these and other matters—indulging in those dangerous generalities which sound so safe, and in reality narrow down to a little world of two.