Above the house rose a pine-slope where the snow lingered late into the summer. Above this again were rocks and broken declivities of sliding stones; and, crowning all, the everlasting snow.
From the terrace of Torre Garda a strong voice could make itself heard in the valley where tobacco grew and ripened, or on the height where no vegetation lived at all. The house seemed to hang between sky and earth, and the air that moved the cypress trees was cool and thin--a very breath of heaven to make thinkers wonder why any who can help it should choose to live in towns.
The green shutters had been closed across the windows for nearly three months, when on one spring morning the villagers looked up to see the house astir and the windows opened wide.
There had been much to detain the Sarrions at Saragossa and Juanita had to wait for the gratification of her desire to smell the pines and the bracken again.
It seemed that it was no one's business to question the validity of the strange marriage in the chapel of Our Lady of the Shadows. Evasio Mon who was supposed to know more about it than any other, only smiled and said nothing. Leon de Mogente was absorbed in his own peculiar selfishness which was not of this world but the next. He fell into the mistake common to ecstatic minds that thoughts of Heaven justify a deliberate neglect of obvious duties on earth.
"Leon," said Juanita gaily to Cousin Peligros, "will assuredly be a saint some day: he has so little sense of humour."
For Leon it seemed could not be brought to understand Juanita's sunny view of life.
"You may look solemn and talk of great mistakes as much as you like," she said to her brother. "But I know I was never meant for a nun. It will all come right in the end. Uncle Ramon says so. I don't know what he means. But he says it will all come right in the end."
And she shook her head with that wisdom of the world which is given to women only; which may live in the same heart as ignorance and innocence and yet be superior to all the knowledge that all the sages have ever put in books.
There were lawyers to be consulted and moreover paid, and Juanita gaily splashed down her name in a bold schoolgirl hand on countless documents.