“Then I shall.”
“Do you remember where he lives?”
“Yes, I think I can find the house.”
“It’s in the Calle del Sol; any one will point out the palace to you.”
Quentin left the house, turned into the Plaza de la Corredera, and from the Calle del Poyo, by encircling a church, he came out upon the Calle de Santiago. It was a moderately warm day in January, with an overcast sky. A few drops of rain were falling.
Quentin was very much preoccupied by the visit he was about to make.
So far, he had not asked what relation he was to that man. Surely some relationship did exist; a bastard kinship; something defamatory to Quentin.
Sunk deep in these thoughts, Quentin wandered from his way, and was obliged to ask where the street was.
The palace of the Marquis of Tavera stood in a street in the lower part of town, which with different names for its different parts, stretched from the Plaza de San Pedro to the Campo de la Madre de Dios.
The Marquis’ palace was extremely large. Five bay-windows, framed in thick moulding, with ornate iron-work and brass flower-pots, opened from a façade of a yellow, porous stone. On either side of the larger centre balcony, there rose two pilasters surmounted by a timpanum, in the middle of which was the half-obliterated carving of a shield. The decayed iron-work of the balustrade was twisted into complicated designs.