“Dare not?” I echoed. “Of what are you afraid?”
“Afraid?” she repeated in a strained voice, speaking like one in a dream, with her eyes fixed straight before her. “Yes, I—I am a wretched, miserable coward, because I fear the punishment.”
“Is your crime of such a flagitious character, then?”
“My crime?” she cried, turning suddenly upon me with flashing eyes. “What—what do you know of my crime? What do you insinuate?”
“Nothing, mademoiselle,” I answered, as politely as I could, though amazed at her sudden change of manner. “Your own strange words must be my excuse for inquisitiveness.”
“Then let us change the subject. To you my private affairs can be of no concern whatever.”
I was not prepared for this stinging rebuff. We passed the front of the Casino, strolling through the shady gardens facing the Concha, and when we had rested upon a convenient seat, pleasantly sheltered from the sun, she grew communicative again. While I had been telling her of my journey over the Pyrenees to Madrid, her grief had been succeeded by gaiety, and when I related some amusing contretemps that had befallen me at a wayside posada in the Sierra de Guara, she laughed lightly. At length at my request, she drew out a silver case, and, in exchange for my card, gave me one bearing the name “Doroteita d’Avendaño.”
Then, with an ingenuousness that enhanced her personal charms, she told me of herself, that she was the only daughter of the Count Miguel d’Avendaño, who had represented Castillejo in the Senate, but who had died a year ago. The widowed Countess—who had been her companion on the previous night—had let their mansion in the Calle Ancha de San Bernardo at Madrid to a wealthy foreigner, and since that time her mother and herself had been travelling, spending the winter at Cannes, the spring at Seville, and coming to San Sebastian for a few weeks previous to going north to Paris. She pointed out their villa from where we sat, a great white house with a terrace in front, standing out against a background of foliage on the side of the hill overlooking the bay. The Count, her father, had, I knew, been one of the most celebrated of Spanish statesmen. Referring to many well-known personages at Court as her friends, her observations regarding their little idiosyncrasies were full of dry humour. With a versatility of narrative she told me many little anecdotes of the Queen-Regent and the infant monarch, the knowledge of which betrayed an intimacy with the domestic arrangements of the palace, and for fully an hour gossiped on pleasantly.
“And amid this life of gaiety and happiness I find you kneeling in yonder church, abandoned to melancholy!” I observed at length, half reproachfully.
The light died out of her face.