Concha rose to her feet impulsively.
"Then," she said, "I must see her. Also I am devoured with eagerness to see you ride."
She permitted her eyes to take in the trim figure of the Vitorian, who had also risen to his feet.
"Do go and bring her," she murmured; "I will take care of your musket. You need not be a moment, and—I will wait for you!"
A little spark kindles a great fire in a Spanish heart, and the young man, counting the cost, rapidly decided that the risk was worth running. The horses of the Estella regiment were picketed in a little hollow a few hundred yards behind the main camp. It was his duty to watch these two strangers, of whom one had already gone back to the camp, while as to the other—well, Adrian Zumaya of the province of Alava felt at that moment that he could cheerfully devote the rest of his life to watching that other.
In a moment more he had laid down his musket at Concha's feet, and set off as fast as he could in the direction of the horses, keeping well out of sight in the trough of a long roller of foot-hill until he was close to the cavalry lines, and could smell the honest stable-smell which in the open air mingled curiously with those of aromatic thyme and resinous juniper.
In five minutes he was back, riding his best and sitting like a Centaur.
Concha's eyes glistened with pleasure, and she ran impulsively forward to pat the cream-coloured mare, a clean-built, well-gathered, workmanlike steed.
Now the young man was very proud of the interest this pretty Andalucian girl was showing in his equipment and belongings to the exclusion of those of his comrades. Perhaps he might have been less pleased had he known that the young lady's interest extended even to the gun he had left behind him, the charge of which she had already managed to extract with deft and competent fingers.
"La Perla she is called," he cried with enthusiasm, "and sure none other ever better deserved the name! I wish we of the camp possessed a side-saddle that the Señorita might try her paces. She has the easiest motion in the world. It is like riding in a great lady's coach with springs or being carried in a Sedan-chair. But she is of a delicate mouth. Ah, yes—if the Señorita mounted, it would be necessary to remember that she must not bear hard upon the reins. Then would La Perla of a certainty take the bit between her teeth and run like the devil when Father Mateo is after him with a holy water syringe!"