It was a large goblet of Venetian crystal, studded with brilliantly-coloured stones. The Padre Florez looked at the dregs and shook his white head.
"This wine has been drugged—there is a fresh mystery here! And Donna Isidora de Saldos was with you last night—you are assured of that?"
"As sure as that I live and breathe, Senor Padre."
"Alone?" continued the priest, with knitted brows.
"Alone."
"How came it to pass that her brother entrusted her with you?" asked the padre, suspiciously.
Quentin was too ill to explain that she had been sent with him in disguise, as the mother of the guerilla Trevino; and Padre Florez, who naturally conceived the idea that they had eloped as lovers, and had quarrelled, to prevent a great tragedy, set about curing him.
He compelled him to drink quantities of new milk and salad oil, both of which he procured from the muleteers who were bivouacking on the terrace; after this, he gave him warm water mixed with the same oil, and fresh butter, to provoke intense sickness, to destroy the acrimony of the poison, and to prevent it doing injury to the bowels.
"If the pain continues, Ramon, we shall have to kill a sheep," said the padre, "and apply its intestines, reeking hot, to the stomach of the patient; 'tis a remedy I have never known to fail in allaying spasms there, especially if the sheep be a moreno."
By nightfall, however, thanks to the good padre's real skill, which was superior to his superstition in the efficacy of black-faced mutton, Quentin was quite relieved, and after a time related his whole story from the time of his leaving Herreruela. Florez listened to him with considerable interest, approved of all he had done, and gave him much good advice; but added that he feared De Saldos would hold him accountable for the loss of his sister, for whose treatment, and of whose ultimate fate among the French, he had the greatest apprehension. He added that his visit to the villa seemed to have been a special interposition of heaven in Quentin's favour, as he would inevitably have died in mortal agonies but for the prompt and simple applications which saved him.