, it were, perhaps, better
that you should.'

At this, I raised myself in bed, and opened my heart to the old man;
telling him of our love and of her decision, owning my own horrors, my
own passing fancies, but telling him that these were at an end; and with
something more than a purely formal submission, appealing to his
judgment.

He heard me very patiently and without surprise; and when I had done, he
sat for some time silent. Then he began: 'The church,' and instantly
broke off again to apologise. 'I had forgotten, my child, that you were
not a Christian,' said he. 'And indeed, upon a point so highly unusual,
even the church can scarce be said to have decided. But would you have
my opinion? The Senorita is, in a matter of this kind, the best judge; I
would accept her judgment.'

On the back of that he went away, nor was he thenceforward so assiduous
in his visits; indeed, even when I began to get about again, he plainly
feared and deprecated my society, not as in distaste but much as a man
might be disposed to flee from the riddling sphynx. The villagers, too,
avoided me; they were unwilling to be my guides upon the mountain. I
thought they looked at me askance, and I made sure that the more
superstitious crossed themselves on my approach. At first I set this
down to my heretical opinions; but it began at length to dawn upon me
that if I was thus redoubted it was because I had stayed at the
residencia. All men despise the savage notions of such peasantry; and
yet I was conscious of a chill shadow that seemed to fall and dwell upon
my love. It did not conquer, but I may not deify that it restrained my
ardour.

Some miles westward of the village there was a gap in the sierra, from
which the eye plunged direct upon the residencia; and thither it became
my daily habit to repair. A wood crowned the summit; and just where the
pathway issued from its fringes, it was overhung by a considerable shelf
of rock, and that, in its turn, was surmounted by a crucifix of the size
of life and more than usually painful in design. This was my perch;
thence, day after day, I looked down upon the plateau, and the great old
house, and could see Felipe, no bigger than a fly, going to and fro about
the garden. Sometimes mists would draw across the view, and be broken up
again by mountain winds; sometimes the plain slumbered below me in
unbroken sunshine; it would sometimes be all blotted out by rain. This
distant post, th