"No; not until after he was hurt. I'm the man he quarreled with."
The priest looked at the ship that would sail onward this afternoon.
Then a smile of great beauty passed over his face, and he addressed the strange. "I thank you. You will never know what you have done for me."
"It is nothing," answered the stranger, awkwardly. "He told me you set great store on a new organ."
Padre Ignacio turned away from the ship and rode back through the gorge. When he had reached the shady place where once he had sat with Gaston Villere, he dismounted and again sat there, alone by the stream, for many hours. Long rides and outings had been lately so much his custom that no one thought twice of his absence; and when he resumed to the mission in the afternoon, the Indian took his mule, and he went to his seat in the garden. But it was with another look that he watched the sea; and presently the sail moved across the blue triangle, and soon it had rounded the headland.
With it departed Temptation for ever.
Gaston's first coming was in the Padre's mind; and, as the vespers bell began to ring in the cloistered silence, a fragment of Auber's plaintive tune passed like a sigh across his memory.
[Musical score appears here]
For the repose of Gaston's young, world-loving spirit, they sang all that he had taught them of Il Trovatore.
After this day, Felipe and all those who knew and loved the Padre best, saw serenity had returned to his features; but for some reason they began to watch those features with more care.