Juanita stood up and listened, looking westward as he did. The sound was like the sound of thunder, but shorter and sharper.
"What is it?"
"The Carlists--the sons of dogs!" he answered, with a laugh, and he shook his whip towards the mountains. "See," he said, gathering up the reins again, "that dust on the road to the west--that is the troops marching out from Pampeluna. We are in it again--in it again!"
At the gate of the city there was a crowd of people. The carriage had to stand aside against the trees to let pass the guns which clattered down the slope. The men were laughing and shouting to each other. The officers, erect on their horses, seemed to think only of the safety of the guns as a woman entering a ballroom reviews her jewelery with a quick comprehensive glance.
At the guard-house, beneath the second gateway, there occurred another delay. The driver was a Pampeluna man and well-known to the sentries. But they did not recognise his passenger and sent for the officer on duty.
"The Señorita Juanita de Mogente," he muttered, as he came into the road--a stout and grizzled warrior smoking a cigarette. "Ah, yes!" he said, with a grave bow at the carriage door. "I remember you as a schoolgirl. I remember now. Forgive the delay and pass in--Señora de Sarrion."
Juanita was ushered into the little bare waiting-room in the convent school of the Sisters of the True Faith in the Calle de la Dormitaleria. It is a small, square apartment at the end of a long and dark passage. The day filters dimly into it through a barred window no larger than a pocket-handkerchief. Juanita stood on tiptoe and looked into a narrow alley. On the sill of this window Marcos had stood to wrench apart the bars of the window immediately overhead, through which he had lifted her one cold night--years and years ago, it seemed.
Nothing had changed in this gloomy house.
"The dear Sister Superior is at prayer in the chapel," the doorkeeper had whispered. The usual formula; for a nun must always be given the benefit of the doubt. If she is alone in her cell or in the chapel it is always piously assumed that she is at prayer. Juanita smiled at the familiar words.
"Then I will wait," she said, "but not very long."