"God knows what--afterward! We shall never get out of the gates, 'tis certain. There are five--all are doubtless warned by now. Pity 'tis we did not follow our friend's suggestion and disguise ourselves. That way, we might have been safe. I as a monk, you as a woman, we should never have been recognised."
"'Tis too late," said Juan. "Too late now. We must go on; on to the end. Yet I wonder where that friend, Jaime, is. Perhaps taken, his disguise seen through."
We had reached the house to which this garden belonged by now--a different one from the neglected thing we had lately left, well cared for, and with great tubs of oleanders and orange trees placed about it at regular intervals, as we could now see by the rising moon, which was peeping over the chimney tops and casting its rays along a broad path which we had followed; were close up to the house, a great white one, with this, its garden side, full of windows covered with persianas, or jalousies, and from some of them lights streaming.
"'Tis an inn, for sure," I said, "and full of--hark! whose voice is that?"
Yet there was no need to ask; 'twas a voice not easily forgotten which was speaking now; the voice of the man, Señor, or "Father," Jaime.
"Ay," we heard in those rich, sonorous tones, "alive, and here to call you to account."
And following this we heard another voice, supplicating, wailing, screaming, almost: "No! No! No! Mercy! Pardon!"
Beneath the moon's increasing rays we gazed into each other's eyes, then quickly, together--as if reading each other's thoughts also--we moved toward where those sounds proceeded from.
Toward a room in the angle of the great white house, with a door opening on to the garden in which we stood--'twas open now, though half across it hung a heavy curtain of some thick material. It was easy enough to guess how 'twas that curtain was thrown half back and the door stood open.
That way Jaime had come upon his prey.