Descending the steps into the garden from the house were two men, one talking violently, the other seeking to calm him.
‘My uncle and the Alcalde—they have seen us from the windows,’ said Julia quickly. All her nervousness of manner seemed to have vanished, leaving her concentrated and alert. Some men are thus in warfare—nervous until the rifle opens fire, and then cool and ready.
‘Quick!’ whispered Julia. ‘Let us turn back.’
She wheeled round, and Conyngham did the same.
‘Julia!’ they heard General Vincente call in his gentle voice.
Julia, who was tearing the pink envelope, took no heed. Within the first covering a second envelope appeared, bearing a longer address. ‘Give that to the man whose address it bears, and save me from ruin,’ said the girl, thrusting the letter into Conyngham’s hand. She kept the pink envelope.
When, a minute later, they came face to face with General Vincente and his companion, a white-faced, fluttering man of sixty years, Julia Barenna received them with a smile. There are some men who, conscious of their own quickness of resource, are careless of danger, and run into it from mere heedlessness, trusting to good fortune to aid them should peril arise. Frederick Conyngham was one of these. He now suspected that this was no love letter which the man called Larralde had given him in Algeciras.
‘Julia,’ said the General, ‘the Alcalde desires to speak with you.’
Julia bowed with that touch of hauteur which in Spain the nobles ever observe in their manner towards the municipal authorities.
‘Mr. Conyngham,’ continued the General, ‘this is our brave Mayor, in whose hands rests the well-being of the people of Ronda.’