"It is late, let us go."
"Remember what I have said," said Don Alfonso, "I wish to know nothing of your schemes."
Then, without looking at either of them, he waved his hand and so dismissed his two guests.
Magdalen accompanied them to the porch, looking wistfully out into the night as they put on their cloaks and hats; as they shook hands with her she whispered softly to Marcelino:
"Something has happened to annoy papa, I knew it."
Marcelino and Don Carlos had their horses tied under the trees, they mounted and rode slowly away. Until they were squares from the quinta neither of them spoke. Then said Don Carlos in a musing tone:
"See you how two men of the same birth and blood may differ?"
"Don Alfonso is certainly a very different man from his brother as you have described him to me," replied Marcelino.
"Originally he was of much the same character," said Evaña; "but the easy life he led in England has enervated out of him the stern energy which distinguished Don Francisco, and his imprisonments here and at Carracas have completely cowed what spirit he had left. He is a sample of the effects of Spanish tyranny, of which I have seen many; the good in him has been crushed out of him, and he has become what you have seen to-night, a drivelling coward, and at the same time he is dangerous, for he is both treacherous and revengeful."