seal of the Vatican. It was the usual dispensation, easy enough
to procure, for the marriage of an orphan under age.

"I am glad," said Mon, and he tried to look it.

Sarrion went on into the narrow corridor. The friar was sitting on a
worm-eaten bench there, leaning back against the wall, his hand over his
eyes.

"He is hurt," explained Marcos, simply. "He tried to stop us."

Mon made no comment but accompanied them to the door, which he closed
behind them, and then returned to the chapel, reflecting perhaps upon how
small an incident the history of nations may turn. For if the friar had
been able to withstand the Sarrions--if there had been a grating to the
small door in the Calle de la Merced--Don Carlos de Borbone might have
worn the three crowns of Spain.

CHAPTER XIX
COUSIN PELIGROS
The novitiate dress had been dispensed with, and Juanita wore her usual
school-dress of black, with a black mantilla. They therefore walked the
length of the Calle de la Merced without attracting undue attention.

Juanita's cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright with excitement. She
slipped her hand within Sarrion's arm and gave it a little squeeze of
affection.

"How kind of you to come," she said. "I knew I could trust you. I was
never afraid."

Sarrion smiled a little dryly and glanced towards Marcos, who had met and
overcome all the difficulties, and who now walked quietly by his side,
concealing the bloodstains on the handkerchief covering his lips.

Then Juanita let go Sarrion's left arm and ran round behind him to take
the other, while with her right hand she took Marcos' left arm.

"There," she cried, with a laugh. "Now I am safe from all the world--from
all the world! Is it not so?"

"Yes," answered Marcos, turning to look at her as she moved, her feet
hardly touching the ground, between them.

"Why do you look at me like that?" she asked.

"I think you have grown."

"I know I have," she answered gravely. And she stopped in the street to
stand her full height and to draw her slim bodice in at the waist. "I am
an inch taller than Milagros, but Milagros is getting most preposterously
fat. The girls tell her that she will soon be like Sor Dorothea who is so
huge that she has to be hauled up from her knees like a sack that has
been saying its prayers. That stupid Milagros cries when they say it."

"Is Milagros going to be a nun?" asked Sarrion, absent-mindedly. He was
thinking of something else and looked