Mon glanced at her sharply, though his lips still smiled.
"Allow me," he said. "Those keys among which you are looking are the keys of cupboards and not of doors. There are only two door keys among them all."
He took the keys and led the way towards the door hidden behind the grove of nut-trees. The nightingales were singing as he passed beneath the boughs, followed by Sor Teresa. Juanita hurrying up towards the house by another path, turned and glanced anxiously over her shoulder.
"This, I think, will be the key," said Mon, affably, as he stooped to examine the lock. And he was right.
He opened the door, passed out and turned to salute Sor Teresa before he closed it gently, in her face.
"Go with God, my sister," he said, bowing with a raised hat and ceremonious smile.
He waited until he heard Sor Teresa lock the door from within. Then he turned to examine the ground in the little lane that skirts the convent wall. But on the sun-baked ground, the neat, light feet of the Moor had made no mark. He looked at the wall, but failed to perceive the hole in it, for the woodbine and the wild rose tree covered it like a curtain.
Marcos had made a round by the summit of the hill and turning to the right rejoined the high road from the Casa Blanca, crossing the canal again by that bridge and returning to Saragossa by the broad avenue known as the Monte Torrero.
He reined in his horse beneath the lamp that hangs from the trees opposite to the gate of the town called the Puerta de Santa Engracia, and unfolded the note that
Juanita had written to him. It was scribbled in pencil on a half sheet torn from an exercise book.