Juanita's carriage emerged from the valley of the Wolf into the plain at sunset. She could see that the driver paid but little heed to his horses. His attention wandered constantly to the mountains. For, instead of looking to the road in front, his head was ever to the right, and his eyes searched the plain and the bare brown hills.

At last he pulled up and, turning on his box, held up one finger.

"Listen, SeÑorita," he said, and his dark eyes were alight with excitement.

Juanita stood up and listened, looking westward as he did. The sound was like the sound of thunder, but shorter and sharper.

"What is it?"

"The Carlists--the sons of dogs!" he answered, with a laugh, and he shook his whip towards the mountains. "See," he said, gathering up the reins again, "that dust on the road to the west--that is the troops marching out from Pampeluna. We are in it again--in it again!"

At the gate of the city there was a crowd of people. The carriage had to stand aside against the trees to let pass the guns which clattered down the slope. The men were laughing and shouting to each other. The officers, erect on their horses, seemed to think only of the safety of the guns as a woman entering a ballroom reviews her jewelery with a quick comprehensive glance.

At the guard-house, beneath the second gateway, there occurred another delay. The driver was a Pampeluna man and well-known to the sentries. But they did not recognise his passenger and sent for the officer on duty.

"The SeÑorita Juanita de Mogente," he muttered, as he came into the road--a stout and grizzled warrior smoking a cigarette. "Ah, yes!" he said, with a grave bow at the carriage door. "I remember you as a schoolgirl. I remember now. Forgive the delay and pass in--SeÑora de Sarrion."

Juanita was ushered into the little bare waiting-room in the convent school of the Sisters of the True Faith in the Calle de la Dormitaleria. It is a small, square apartment at the end of a long and dark passage. The day filters dimly into it through a barred window no larger than a pocket-handkerchief. Juanita stood on tiptoe and looked into a narrow alley. On the sill of this window Marcos had stood to wrench apart the bars of the window immediately overhead, through which he had lifted her one cold night--years and years ago, it seemed.

Nothing had changed in this gloomy house.

"The dear Sister Superior is at prayer in the chapel," the doorkeeper had whispered. The usual formula; for a nun must always be given the benefit of the doubt. If she is alone in her cell or in the chapel it is always piously assumed that she is at prayer. Juanita smiled at the familiar words.

"Then I will wait," she said, "but not very long."

She gave the nun a familiar little nod of warning as if to intimate that no tricks of the trade need be tried upon her.

She stood alone in the little gray, dim room now, and waited with brooding eyes. Within, all was quiet with that air of awesome mystery peculiar to the cloister, which so soon gives place with increasing familiarity, to a sense of deadly monotony. It is only from outside that the mystery of the cloister continues to interest. Juanita knew every stone in this silent house. Its daily round of artificial duties appeared small to her eyes.

"They have nothing to do all day in a nunnery," she once said to Marcos in jest. "So they rise up very early in the morning to do it."

She had laughed on first seeing the mark of Marcos' heel on the window-sill. She turned and looked at it again now--without laughing. And she thought of Torre Garda with its keen air, cool to the cheek like spring water; with the scent of the bracken that she loved; with the tall, still pines, upright against the sky, motionless, whispering with the wind.

She had always thought that the cloister represented safety and peace in a world of strife. And now that she was back within the walls she felt that it was better to be in the world, to take part in the strife, if necessary; for Heaven had given her a proud and a fierce heart. She would rather be miserable here all her life than go back to Marcos, who had dared to marry her without loving her.

The door of the waiting-room opened and Sor Teresa stood on the threshold.

"I have come back," said Juanita. "I think I shall go into religion. I have left Torre Garda."

She gave a short laugh and looked curiously at Sor Teresa--impassive in her straight-hanging robes.

"So you have got me back," she said. "Back to the convent."

"Not to this convent," replied Sor Teresa, quietly.

"But I have come back. I shall come back--the Mother Superior..."

"The Mother Superior is in Saragossa. I am mistress here," replied Sor Teresa, standing still and dark, like one of the pines at Torre Garda. The Sarrion blood was rising to her pale cheek. Her eyes glowed darkly beneath her overshadowing head-dress. Command--that indefinable spirit which is vouchsafed to gentle people, while rough and strong men miss it--was written in every line of her face, every fold of her dress, in the quiet of her small, white hands, resting motionless against her skirt.

Juanita stood looking at her with flashing eyes, with her head thrown back, with clenched hands,

"Then I will go somewhere else. But I do not understand you. You always wanted me to go into religion."

Sor Teresa held up one hand and cut short her speech. For the habit of obedience is so strong that clear-headed men will deliberately go to their death rather than relinquish it. The gesture was known to Juanita. It was dreaded in the school.

"Think--" said Sor Teresa. "Think before you say that."

"Well," argued Juanita, "if you did not urge me in words, you used every means in your power to induce me to take the veil--to make it impossible for me to do anything else."

"Think!" urged Sor Teresa. "Think again. Do not include me in such generalities without thinking."

Juanita paused. She ran back in her mind over a hundred incidents of school life, remembered, as such are, with photographic accuracy.

"Well," she admitted at length. "You did your best to make me hate it--at all events."

"Ah!" said Sor Teresa, with a slow smile.

"Then you did not want me to go into religion--" Juanita came a step nearer and peered into Sor Teresa's face. She might as well have sought an answer in a face of stone.

"Answer me," she said impatiently.

"All are not suited for the religious life," answered the Sister Superior after the manner of her teaching. "I have known many such, and I have seen much sorrow arising from a mistaken sense of duty. I have heard of lives wrecked by it--I have known of two."

Juanita who had moved away impatiently, now turned and looked at Sor Teresa. The gloom of evening was gathering in the little bare room. The stillness of the convent was oppressive.

"Were you suited to the religious life?" asked the girl suddenly.

But Sor Teresa made no answer.

Juanita sat suddenly down. Her movements were quick and impulsive still, as they had been when she was a schoolgirl. When she had arrived at the convent she had felt hungry and tired. The feelings came back to her with renewed intensity now. She was sick at heart. The gray twilight within these walls was like the gloom of a hopeless life.

"I wonder who the other was," she said, half to herself. For the world was opening out before her like a great book hitherto closed. The lives of men and women had gained depth and meaning in a flash of thought.

She rose and impulsively kissed Sor Teresa.

"I used to be afraid of you," she said, with a laugh which seemed to surprise her, as if the voice that had spoken was not her own. Then she sat down again. It was almost dark in the room now, and the window glimmered a forlorn gray.

"I am so hungry and tired," said Juanita in rather a faint voice, "but I am glad I came. I could not stay in Torre Garda another hour. Marcos married me for my money. The money was wanted for political purposes. They could not get it without me--so I was thrown in."

She dropped her two hands heavily on the table and looked up as if expecting some exclamation of surprise or horror. But her hearer made no sign.

"Did you know this?" she asked, in an altered voice after a pause. "Are you in the plot, too, as well as Marcos and Uncle Ramon? Have you been scheming all this time as well, that I should marry Marcos?"

"Since you ask me," said Sor Teresa, slowly and coldly, "I think you would be happier married to Marcos than in religion. It is only my opinion, of course, and you must decide for yourself. It is probably the opinion of others, however, as well. There are plenty of girls who ..."

"Oh! are there?" cried Juanita, passionately. "Who--I should like to know?"

"I am only speaking in generalities, my child."

Juanita looked at her suspiciously, her April eyes glittering with a new light.

"I thought you meant Milagros. He once said that he thought her pretty, and liked her hair. It is red, everybody knows that. Besides, we are married."

She dropped her tired head upon her folded arms--a schoolgirl attitude which returned naturally to her amid the old surroundings.

"I don't care what becomes of me," she said wearily. "I don't know what to do. It is very hard that papa should be dead and Leon ... Leon such a preposterous stupid. You know he is."

Sor Teresa did not deny this sisterly truth; but stood motionless, waiting for Juanita's decision.

"I am so hungry and tired," she said at length. "I suppose I can have something to eat ... if I pay for it."

"Yes; you can have something to eat."

"And I may be allowed to stay here to-night, at all events."

"No, you cannot do that," answered the Sister Superior.

Juanita looked up in surprise.

"Then what am I to do? Where am I to go?"

"Back to your husband," was the reply in the same gentle, inexorable voice. "I will take you back to Marcos--that is all I will do for you. I will take you myself."

Juanita laughed scornfully and shook her head. She had plenty of that spirit which will fight to the end and overcome fatigue and hunger.

"You may be mistress here," she said. "But I do not think you can deny me a lodging. You cannot turn me out into the street."

"Under exceptional circumstances I can do both."

"Ah!" muttered Juanita, incredulously.

"And those circumstances have arisen. There, you can satisfy yourself."

She laid before Juanita, on the bare table, a paper which it was not possible to read in the semi-darkness. She turned to the mantelpiece, where two tall candles added to the sacerdotal simplicity of the room. While the sulphur match burnt blue, Juanita looked indifferently at the printed paper.

"It is a siege notice," said Sor Teresa, seeing that her hearer refused to read. "It is signed by General Pacheco, who arrived here with a large army to-day. It is expected that Pampeluna may be besieged by to-morrow evening. The investment may be a long one, which will mean starvation. Every householder must make a return of those dwelling under his roof. He must refuse domicile to any strangers; and I refuse to take you into this house."

Juanita read the paper now by the light of the candles which Sor Teresa set on the table. It was a curt, military document without explanation or unnecessary mitigation of the truth. For Pampeluna had seen the like before and understood this business thoroughly.

"You can think about it," said Sor Teresa, folding the paper and placing it in her pocket. "I will send you something to eat and drink in this room."

She closed the door, leaving Juanita to realise the grim fact that--shape our lives how we will, with all foresight--every care--the history of the world or of a nation will suddenly break into the story of the single life and march over it with a giant stride.

Presently a lay-sister brought refreshments and set the tray on the table without speaking. Juanita knew her well--and she, doubtless, knew Juanita's story; for her pious face was drawn into lines indicative of the deepest disapproval.

Juanita ate heartily enough, not noticing the cold simplicity of the fare. She had finished before Sor Teresa returned and without thinking of what she was doing, had rearranged the tray after the manner of the refectory. She was standing by the window which she had opened. The sounds of war came into the room with startling distinctness. The boom of the distant guns disputing the advance of the Carlists; while nearer, the bugles called the men to arms and the heavy tramp of feet came and went in the Calle de la Dormitaleria.

"Well," asked Sor Teresa. "What have you decided to do?"

Juanita listened to the alarm of war for a moment before turning from the window.

"It is not a false alarm?" she inquired. "The Carlists are really out?"

For she had fallen into the habit of the Northern Provinces, of speaking of the insurrection as if it were a recurrent flood.

"They have been preparing all the winter," answered Sor Teresa.

"And Pampeluna is to be invested?"

"Yes."

"And Torre Garda?..."

"Torre Garda," answered the nun, "is to be taken this time. The Carlists have decided to besiege it. It is at the mouth of the valley that the fighting is taking place."

"Then I will go back to Torre Garda," said Juanita.

CHAPTER XXVI