orget the date, for the Senor Colonel and the senorita, as well as the
senorito himself, were always very good to me."

The Duke was silenced. The test invented by himself had failed. Calmenare
accepted me as Cristobal O'Donnel; he was obliged to accept me too--at
least for the present.

"Shall we get out of this place?" he said to Lady Vale-Avon.

She swept her daughter with her; but Monica had a backward look for me,
sparkling now with malice for Carmona, radiant with relief for Casa
Triana.

We said good-bye to Calmenare in the Duke's presence; and I would have
pressed a gold piece into his hand for "opening my prison door," but he
would not have it. Afterwards, while we followed the grey car on the
downhill road to Madrid, Pilar told the whole story with dramatic effect
to the Cherub.

"My one hope was in Rafael," she said. "I was good to him, you remember,
when he was ill. And he and I had a great sympathy over Corcito, the dear
grey bull. I prayed he'd never forgiven the Duke for that crime, and that
he'd still be grateful to me. Well, I looked Rafael straight in the eyes
when I said, 'My brother Cristobal is in that place, shut up by the Duke,
who has broken the spring.' With all my soul I willed him to understand,
and he did. 'If the senorita chooses to have a strange gentleman for her
brother, he is her brother for me,' is what he said to himself; no more!
But what if he _hadn't?_"

"That's where I should have come in," remarked Dick.

"What would you have done?" asked Pilar, breathless.

"I don't know," said Dick. "I only know I should have _done_ it; and that
if I had, maybe Carmona wouldn't have been feeling as well as he feels
now."

XVII

LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT

No longer did the Duke desire our company. He had played his little comedy
of good-fellowship, and it was over, though it had not ended according to
his hopes. The grey car did its forty-horse best to outdistance us on the
way to Madrid, but the road--so good that perhaps we lost nothing in the
detour to the Escurial--distributed its favours evenly. We kept close on
the Lecomte's flying heels until one of our four cylinders went to sleep,
and Ropes had to get down and wake it up by testing the ignition.

Some fellow-motorists would have turned to offer help, but the Lecomte was
ever a Levite where we were concerned; and when we were ready to go on,
the grey car was not even a speck in