"I mean of my late profession," he explained, smiling on Concha; "it will not do for a man on the high-road to a commission to commit himself to the statement that he has practised as a bandit, or stopped a coach on the highway in the name of King Carlos Quinto that he might examine more at his ease the governmental mail bags. But our Sergeant—well, I am man-sworn and without honour if he hath not many a time taken blackmail without any such excuse!"
Concha seemed to be considering deeply. Her pretty mouth was pursed up like a ripe strawberry, and her brows were knitted so fiercely that a deep line divided the delicately arched eyebrows.
"And to this I can add somewhat," she began presently; "they say (I know not with what truth) that I have some left-handed gipsy blood in me—and if that man be not a Gitano—why, then I have never seen one. Besides, he speaks with La Giralda in a tongue which neither I nor Don Rollo understand."
"But I thought," said El Sarria, astonished for the first time, "that both you and Don Rollo understood the crabbed gipsy tongue! Have I not heard you speak it together?"
"As it is commonly spoken—yes," she replied, "we have talked many a time for sport. But this which is spoken by the Sergeant and La Giralda is deep Romany, the like of which not half a dozen in Spain understand. It is the old-world speech of the Rom, before it became contaminated by the jargon of fairs and the slang of the travelling horse-clipper."
"Then," said El Sarria, slowly, "it comes to this—'tis you and not I who mistrust these two?"
"No, that I do not," cried Concha, emphatically; "I have tried La Giralda for many years and at all times found her faithful, so that her bread be well buttered and a draught of good wine placed alongside it. But the Sergeant is a strong man and a secret man——"
"Well worth the watching, then?" said El Sarria, looking her full in the face.
Concha nodded.
"Carlist or no, he works for his own hand," she said simply.