Manvers looked quickly up. "I know, I know. It must seem to you a piece of extravagance on my part——; but there were reasons, good reasons. I could hardly have done less."
Don Luis bowed gravely, but said nothing. Manvers felt impelled to further discussion. Had he been a Spaniard he would have left the matter where it was; but he was not, so he went awkwardly on.
"It's a queer story. For some reason or another I don't care to speak of it. The person who gave me this trinket did me—or intended me—an immense service, at a great cost."
"She too," said Don Luis, looking at the Dolorosa, "may have had her reasons."
"It was a woman," said Manvers, with quickening colour, "I see no harm in saying so. I was going to tell you that she believed herself indebted to me for some trifling attention I had been able to show her previously. That is how I explain her giving me the crucifix. It was her way of thanking me—a pretty way. I was touched."
Don Luis waved his hand. "It is very evident, señor caballero. Your way of recording it is exemplary: her way, perhaps, was no less so."
"You will think me of a sentimental race," Manvers laughed, "and I won't deny it—but it's a fact that I was touched."
Don Luis, who, throughout the conversation, had been turning the crucifix about, now examined the inscription. He held it up to the light that he might see it better. Manvers observed him, but did not take the hint which was thus, rather bluntly, conveyed him. The case once more in his breast-pocket, he saluted Don Luis and went his way.
Shortly afterwards he left Valladolid on horseback.
Perhaps a week went by, perhaps ten days; and then Don Luis had a visitor one night in the Café de la Luna, a mean-looking, pale and harassed visitor with a close-cropped head, whose eyebrows flickered like summer fires in the sky, who would not sit down, who kept his felt hat rolled in his hands, whose deference was extreme, and accepted as a matter of course. He was known in Valladolid, it seemed. Pepe knew him, called him Tormillo.