was indeed the priest's Manuela who called him, and though his heart
hasted forward to Dolores, and overleaped boundaries as a dog leaps a
wall, still he could not refuse Manuela. Had she not brought them
together at the first?

"Ah, Manuela, you are kind--there is good news up at the house, is there
not? No ill has befallen the little one?"

"What has brought you home so soon?" cried the woman, a touch of
impatient eagerness in her tones. "You will frighten Dolores if you
blunder it upon her all unshaven and travel-stained like that. Have you
no more sense, when you know----?"

"Know what? I know nothing!" Ramon slurred his speech in his eagerness.
"What is there to know?"

Manuela laughed--a little strained sound, as if she had been recovering
a shaken equanimity, and was not yet sure of her ground.

"You, so long married--five, six months, is it not so--and yet not to
know! But a fool is always a fool, Don Ramon, even if he owns a vineyard
and a charming young wife ten times too good for him!"

"Truth of God!" gasped Ramon, with his favourite oath, "but I did not
know. I am the father of all donkeys. But what am I to do, tell me,
Manuela? I will obey you!"

The woman's countenance suddenly cleared.

"No, Don Ramon, we will not call the promised one--the blessed one, a
donkey. A father! Yes, Don Ramon, but no father of _borricos_. No, no!
There will not be so brave a babe from Navarra to Catalunia as yours and
Lola's. But we must go quietly, very quietly. He walks far who begins
slowly. He who treads upon eggs does not dance the _bolero_. You will
bide here and talk to the holy Father, and I myself will go to the house
of Ramon of the Soft Heart and the Lumbering Hoofs, and warn the little
one warily. For I know her--yes, Manuela knows her. I am a widow and
have borne children--ay, borne them also to the grave, and who, if not
I, should know the hearts of young wives that are not yet mothers!"

She patted his arm softly as she spoke, and the great rough-husked heart
of Ramon of Sarria, the Aragonese peasant, glowed softly within him. He
looked down into Manuela's black eyes that hid emotion as a stone is
hidden at the bottom of a mountain tarn. Manuela smiled with thin
flexible lips, her easy subtle smile. She saw her way now, and to do her
justice she always did her best to earn her wages.

Lovers would be lovers, so she argued, God had made it so. Who was she,
Manuela, the housekeeper of Padre Mateo of Sa