hasty and made a mistake in our feelings. Our
meeting was romantic, and we'd been carried away by our youth and hot
blood. Now you'd had time to see that it would be unwise of me to give up
a man like the Duke of Carmona for one unworthy enough to have fallen in
love with another girl. Accordingly, you released me from all obligations,
and took it for granted that you were also free. Then you bade me
good-bye, wishing me a happy future in case your car and the Duke's
happened to go on by different ways. Do you wonder I tried to hate you,
and that I said 'yes' the very next night, when the Duke asked me again if
I wouldn't change my mind and marry him?"

For answer, I caught her against my breast, and we clung to each other as
if we could never part.

"Such a promise is no promise," I said at last. "I have you, and I don't
mean to let you go, lest I lose you for ever. Monica, will you trust
yourself to me, and run away with me to-night?"

"Yes," she whispered. "I daren't go back to them. But what shall we do?"

"I'll tell you what I've been thinking," I said. "My car isn't far off.
Colonel O'Donnel and Pilar, who'd do anything for you and me, are in the
cathedral. Just outside this chapel the man who locked us in is waiting
for my signal to open the door. With the O'Donnels and Dick Waring to see
you through, will you motor with me to Cadiz, take ship for Gibraltar, and
marry me on English soil?"

"Suppose there should be no ship for days?" she hesitated.

"There is one nearly every day; but at worst I can hire a boat of some
sort."

"Once we were in Gibraltar, you'd be out of reach if the Duke tried to
take revenge," she said. "Yes, I _will_ go! I love you and I can't give
you up again. Oh, Ramon, I never would have promised to marry him, if I
hadn't longed to show you that--that I didn't care, and that there was
someone who wanted me very much, if you didn't."

"How like a woman!" I exclaimed, laughing--for I could laugh now.

"He has only kissed my hand," she went on, "and I hated even that."

"Yet you're wearing his brooch," a returning flash of jealousy made me
say; "and a mantilla, to please him."

"The brooch is his mother's. So is the mantilla. She at least has been
kind; so I let her put them both on for me to-day, when she asked."

"Kind? When there's time I'll tell you one or two things. But now there's
no time for anything except to take you away."

"Listen! The Miserere has begun," she said. "H