d be happy in a gentleman's house, may we
not?" cried Juanita, running after her, and throwing one arm round her
rather unbending and capacious waist. "You are an old dear, and you must
not be so solemn about it. Marcos and I are only married for fun, you
know."

And the door closed behind them, shutting off Juanita's voluble
explanations.

"You see," said Sarrion, after a pause. "She is happy enough."

"Now," answered Marcos. "But she may find out some day that she is not."

Juanita came back before long and found Sarrion alone.

"Where is Marcos?" she asked.

"He is taking a siesta," answered Sarrion.

"Like a poor man."

"Yes, like a poor man. He was not in bed all last night. You had a
narrower escape of being made a nun than you suspect."

Juanita's face fell. She went to the window and stood there looking out.

"When are we going to Torre Garda?" she asked, after a long silence. "I
hate towns ... and people. I want to smell the pines ... and the
bracken."

CHAPTER XX

AT TORRE GARDA

The river known as the Wolf finds its source in the eternal snows of the
Pyrenees. Amid the solitary grandeur of the least known mountains in
Europe it rolls and tumbles--tossed hither and thither in its rocky bed,
fed by this and that streamlet from stony gorges--down to the green
valley of Torre Garda.

Here there is a village crouched on either side of the river-bed, and
above it on a plateau surrounded by chestnut trees and pines, stands the
house of the Sarrions. In winter the wholesome smell of wood smoke rising
from the chimneys pervades the air. In summer the warm breath of the
pines creeps down the mountains to mingle with the cooler air that stirs
the bracken.

Below all, summer and winter, at evening and at dawn, night and day,
growls the Wolf--so named from the continuous low-pitched murmur of its
waters through the defile a mile below the village. The men of the valley
of the Wolf have a hundred tales of their river in its different moods,
and firmly believe that the voice which is ever in their ears speaks to
such as have understanding, of every change in the weather. The old women
have no doubt that it speaks also of those things that must affect the
prince and the peasant alike; of good and ill fortune; of life and of
death; of hope and its slow, slow dying in the heart. Certain it is that
the river had its humours not to be accounted for by outward
things--seeming to be gay without reason, li