The sun was high when Tacita woke the next morning. The chamber door was open, and an odor of coffee came up the stair. The window sash and curtain had been drawn back, admitting the pine-scented air and a rain of sunshine that fell over everything in large golden drops.
It was late. “But that does not matter,” Elena said, coming up with the coffee. “We could not have started sooner. My brother had to come for us; and it takes three hours. There were other things to do besides. And when they were all done, we talked over the incidents of a five years’ separation. How glad I was to see him!”
Tears were shining in her eyes. “There is no haste. My brother has to prepare some things. We go by an inner path, not the one Dylar took. We travel in a southwesterly direction across the mountains; and you will reach your chamber long before sunset. I have thought that you would not care to see any strangers to-night. Am I right? Well, now we will go down. But first, I have a word to say to you.”
There was something in her face that arrested attention, an excitement that was almost a trembling. “Tacita, do you remember all that your mother and grandfather told you, which you refused to repeat to me?”
Tacita made no reply in words. Already she divined.
The nurse leaned to whisper a word in her ear, and give her a sign.
Tacita looked at her with a mild surprise.
The nurse went to look out the window, and returning, repeated her pantomime and whisper.
“Well?” said Tacita wonderingly.
“Dylar reproved me for having tried you in Seville,” the nurse said, and again repeated the whisper and the touch.