She was thinking these thoughts as she drove through the little mountain village.
"What is that--it sounds like thunder or guns?" inquired Evasio Mon, pausing in his late and simple luncheon in the dining-room.
"A clerical ear like yours should not know the sound of guns," replied Sarrion with a curt laugh. "It is not that, however. It is a cart or a carriage crossing the bridge below the village."
Mon nodded his head and continued to give his attention to his plate.
"Juanita looks well--and happy," he said, after a pause.
Sarrion looked at him and made no reply. He was borrowing from the absent Marcos a trick of silence which he knew to be effective in a subtle war of words.
"Do you not think so?"
"I am sure of it, Evasio."
Sarrion was wondering why he had come to Torre Garda--this stormy petrel of clerical politics--whose coming never boded good. Mon was much too wise to be audacious for audacity's sake. He was not a theatrical man, but one who had worked consistently and steadily for a cause all through his life. He was too much in earnest to consider effect or heed danger.
"I am not on the winning side, but I am sure that I am on the right one," he had once said in public. And the speech went the round of Spain.