"You will speak to your father now, will you not?" said Elisa Puyrredon to Marcelino, as he took up his hat to go.
"I am going at once," asked Marcelino.
"At last I shall believe that there are some men who know how to love," said she to him in a whisper.
It was late in the afternoon when Marcelino reached his father's house. Don Roderigo had left half an hour before for the quinta, where the family were then staying. He ordered his horse to be saddled and sent after him to the house of Don Carlos Evaña, whither he proceeded on foot. He found Don Carlos in his study, his table covered with sheets of manuscript which he was revising. Marcelino took up some of these sheets and glanced over them.
"If Don Ciriaco Asneiros still wants proofs of treason, you had better send him a few of these, Carlos," said he.
"Treason, you say," replied Evaña, "wait a month or two and you will call them patriotic."
"So soon?"
"For what are we to wait? Everything is now ready, it wants but a spark and the mine explodes."
"Is this the spark?"
"Scarcely so. This is the wind to keep the spark from going out."