"You have some employment of a sort suited to the taste of this adventurous young man?" she went on. "I understand and sympathise with his desire not to return to the wars in the North."
"There is the little matter of the suppression of the monasteries," returned Mendizábal, "to take effect (as your Majesty doubtless remembers) on the twentieth of the month. It is already the sixth. There may be some slight trouble where the orders are strong. I propose that we send this distinguished young Scottish soldier (whose noble father I had the honour of knowing somewhat intimately) to Valencia or the Baleares with vice-regal powers. We have great need of such men at such a time."
Rollo gasped and bowed his head. The crimson rose to his cheek. To be a Governor with almost regal powers and soldiers at his beck, to hold a turbulent province quiet under his hand! How he wished there were no such thing as "honour" anywhere, keeping him by mere iteration and irritancy to the resolution his conscience had extorted from him.
Mendizábal thought the young man only doubtful of his capacity, and patted him on the shoulder with fatherly tolerance and encouragement.
"You will do very well," he said kindly, "we will give you a free hand, full powers, and as many soldiers as you want. Besides, the Carlists have been some while in these regions, and we have not been able to get our own men. Now you can look them up!"
Then Rollo, suddenly finding words, spoke his mind fully and freely.
"I cannot go," he said; "at least, not till I have fulfilled a sacred duty which lies heavily upon me. I took up a charge. I have not fulfilled it. I cannot serve the Queen-Regent till I have laid down that which I undertook, and to the person who charged me with the mission!"
The Queen stared at the bold young man, but the Prime Minister understood better.
"It is his point of honour," he explained to Maria Cristina; "those of his nation cannot help it. It is in the blood and in the gloomy creed which they profess—a sour and inconvenient religion in which there is no confession."
"No confession!" cried the Queen, casting up her hands in horror, "no absolution! How then can they go on living from day to day?"