Leaving this path, and striking off to the left, Donna Ximena, to whose guidance he silently and implicitly committed himself, and who rode a little way in front, managing her mule with ease, and, considering her years, with undoubted grace, conducted him up a steep and narrow track that led into the wildest part of the mountains, where the summits of slaty granite were already beginning to be powdered by frost and snow in the early hours of morning, and where the valleys, which the industry of the Moors made gardens that teemed with fertility and beauty, are now desert wastes, abounding only in rank pasturage.
Their cattle soon became blown, and, as the pleasant breeze that fanned the foliage in the forenoon, had already died away, and been succeeded by an oppressive and sultry closeness, they proceeded slowly, and now Quentin thought he might venture to converse a little with his silent companion, for the monotony of travelling thus became tiresome in the extreme.
"Donna Ximena," said he, as their nags walked slowly up the mountain path. "Donna Ximena!" he repeated, in a louder key, before she said, without turning her head—
"Well, senor?"
"It surprises me much that Don Baltasar permits a girl so lovely as his sister to reside among those dangerous guerillas."
To this remark the haughty old lady made no response, so, raising his voice, he added—
"He may now be without a home to leave her in; but, certainly, Isidora is, without exception, the most beautiful and winning girl I ever saw—in her own style, at least," he concluded, as he thought of Flora Warrender.
He had to shout this remark at the utmost pitch of his voice before the old lady replied, with a gloved hand at her right ear,—
"Yes, senor—she put a large and beautiful sausage into the alforja."
"Bother the old frump!" said Quentin; then shouting louder still, he added, "Your head, senora, is so muffled in that mantle and veil, that it is quite impossible you can hear me."