She paused with her hand on the door, looking back, her face all shaded by her tumbled hair hanging to her waist.
"Are you sure you have not heard from papa?"
"Quite sure--! I wish I had," he added when the door was closed behind her.
[
CHAPTER IV]
THE JADE--CHANCE
The same evening, by the light of his solitary lamp, in the small room--which had been a lady's boudoir in olden days--the Count de Sarrion sat down to write a letter to his son. He despatched it at once by a rider to Torre Garda, far beyond Pampeluna, on the southern slope of the Pyrenees.
"I am growing too old for this work," he said to himself as he sealed the letter. "It wants a younger man. Marcos will do it, though he hates the pavement. There is something of the chase in it, and Marcos is a hunter."
At his call a man came into the room, all dusty and sunburnt, a typical man of Aragon, dry and wrinkled, burnt like a son of Sahara. His clothing, like his face, was dust-coloured. He wore knee-breeches of homespun, brown stockings, a handkerchief that had once been coloured bound round his head, with the knot over his left ear. He was startlingly rough and wild in appearance, but his features, on examination, were refined, and his eyes intelligent.
"I want you to go straight to Torre Garda with this letter, and give it into the hand of my son with your own hand. It is important. You may be watched and followed; you understand?"