The rogue's face twinkled. "Good, sir, good. We go. I show you Manuela all-holy like a nun. I know whata she do. Look for 'eaven all day. That Chucha she tell me something—and the portero, 'e damgood fellow."
Resplendent in white duck trousers, Mr. Manvers was remarked upon by a purely native company of sightseers. Quick-eyed ladies in mantillas were there, making play with their fans and scent-bottles; attendant cavaliers found something of which to whisper in the cool-faced Englishman with his fair beard, blue eyes, and eye-glass, his air of detachment, which disguised his real feelings, and of readiness to be entertained, which they misinterpreted.
The facts were that he was painfully involved in Manuela's fate, and uncomfortably near being in love again with the lovely unfortunate. She was no longer a pretty thing to be kissed, no longer even a handsome murderess; she was become a heroine, a martyr, a thing enskied and sainted.
He had seen more than he had been meant to see during his ordeal in the Audiencia—her consciousness of himself, for instance, as revealed in that last dying look she had given him, that long look before she turned and followed her gaolers out of court. He guessed at her agonies of shame, he understood how it was that she had courted it; in fine, he knew very well that her heart was in his keeping—and that's a dangerous possession for a man already none too sure of the whereabouts of his own.
When the organ music thrilled and opened, and the Recogidas filed in—some hundred of them—his heart for a moment stood still, as he scanned them through the gloom. They were dressed exactly alike in dull clinging grey, all wore close-fitting white caps, were nearly all dead-white in the face. They all shuffled, as convicts do when they move close-ordered to their work afield.
It shocked him that he utterly failed to identify Manuela—and it brought him sharply to his better senses that Gil Perez saw her at once. "See her there, master, see there my beautiful," the man groaned under his breath, and Manvers looked where he pointed, and saw her; but now the glamour was gone. Gil was her declared lover. The Squire of Somerset could not stoop to be his valet's rival.
The Squire of Somerset, however, observed that she held herself more stiffly than her co-mates, and shuffled less. The prison garb clothed her like a weed; she had the trick of wearing clothes so that they draped the figure, not concealed it, were as wax upon it, not a cerement. That which fell shapeless and heavily from the shoulders of the others, upon her seemed to grow rather from the waist—to creep upwards over the shoulders, as ivy steals clinging over a statue in a park. Here, said he, is a maiden that cannot be hid. Call her a murderess, she remains perfect woman; call her convict, Magdalen, she is some man's solace. He looked: at Gil Perez, motionless and intent by his side, and heard his short breath: There is her mate, he thought to himself, and was saved.
They filed out as they had come in. They all stood, turned towards the exit, and waited until they were directed to move. Then they followed each other like sheep through a gateway, looking, so far as he could see, at nothing, expecting nothing, and remembering nothing. A down-trodden herd, he conceived them, their wits dulled by toil. He was not near enough to see the gleam which kept them alive. Nuns gave them their orders with authoritative hands, quick always, and callous by routine, probably not intended to be so harsh as they appeared. He saw one girl pushed forward by the shoulder with such suddenness that she nearly fell; another flinched at a passionate command; another scowled as she passed her mistress. He watched to see how Manuela, who had come in one of the first and must go out one of the last, would bear herself, and was relieved by a pretty and enheartening episode.
Manuela, as she passed, drew her hand along the top of the bench with a lingering, trailing touch. It encountered that of the nun in command, and he saw the nun's hand enclose and press the penitent's. He saw Manuela's look of gratitude, and the nun's smiling affection; he believed that Manuela blushed. That gratified him extremely, and enlarged his benevolent intention.
Had Gil Perez seen it? He thought not. Gil Perez' black eyes were fixed upon Manuela's form. They glittered like a cat's when he watches a bird in a shrubbery. The valet was quite unlike himself as he followed his master homewards and asked leave of absence for the evening—for the first time in his period of service. Manvers had no doubt at all how that evening was spent—in rapt attention below the barred windows of the House of the Recogidas.