The day before Mrs. Robinson was leaving Madrid, and not, as she somewhat coldly informed Don José Moricada, for Toledo, there was a question of one last expedition.
On the outskirts of the town, in an old house reputed to have been at one time the country residence of that French Ambassador, Monsieur de Villars, whose wife had left so vivid an account of seventeenth-century Madrid, were to be seen a magnificent collection of paintings and studies by Goya. According to tradition, they had been painted during the enchanted period of the Don Juanesque artist's love passages with the Duchess of Alba, and very early in her acquaintance with the Spaniard Penelope had expressed a strong desire to see work done by the great painter under such romantic and unusual circumstances. And Don José had been at considerable pains to obtain the absent owner's permission. His request had been acceded to only after a long delay, and at a moment when Mrs. Robinson had become weary both of Madrid and of her Spanish gallant's company.
It seemed, however, churlish to refuse to avail herself of a favour obtained with so much difficulty. For awhile she had hesitated; not only did the warning of the old Ambassador still sound most unpleasantly in her ears, but of late there had come something less restrained, more ardent, in the attitude of the Spaniard, proving only too significantly how right the old Englishman had been. But even were she to return another year to Madrid, the opportunity of visiting this curious old house and its, to her, most notable contents, was not likely to recur.
The appointment for the visit to Los Francias was therefore made and kept; but when Don José, himself driving the splendid English horses of which he was so proud, called at the hotel for Mrs. Robinson, he found, to his angry astonishment, that her old nurse, the maid he so disliked, was to be of the company.
During the drive, Mrs. Mote, in high good-humour at her approaching release from Madrid, noticed with satisfaction that her mistress's Spanish friend seemed preoccupied and gloomy, though Mrs. Robinson's high spirits and apparent pleasure in the picturesque streets and byways they passed through might well have proved infectious.
At last Los Francias was reached; and after walking through deserted, scented gardens, where Nature was disregarding, with triumphant success, the Bourbon formality of myrtle hedges, marble fountains, and sunk parterres, the ill-assorted trio found themselves being ushered by a man-servant, with great ceremony, into a large vestibule situated in the centre of a house recalling rather a French château than a Spanish country-house.
In answer to a muttered word from the Spaniard, Mrs. Mote heard her mistress answer decidedly: 'My maid would much prefer to come with us than to stay here with a man of whose language she doesn't know a word. Besides, this is not the last time. I hope to come back some day, and you will surely visit England.'
On hearing these words Don José had turned and looked at his beautiful companion with a curious gleam in his small, narrow-lidded eyes, and a foreboding had come to the old servant.
The high rooms, opening the one into the other, still contained shabby pieces of fine old French furniture, of which the faded gilding and moth-eaten tapestries contrasted oddly with the vivid, strangely living paintings which seemed ready to leap from the walls above them. The heavy stillness, the utter emptiness, of the great salons oddly affected the old Englishwoman, walking behind the other two; she felt a vague misgiving, and was more than ever glad to remember that in a few days Mrs. Robinson would have left Madrid.
Suddenly, when strolling through the largest, and apparently the last of the whole suite of rooms, Mrs. Mote missed her mistress and Don José.