the King of Shadow Valley. And often Don
Alderon interrupted.

"Oh, Rodriguez," he said, "you are welcome to our ancient, unfortunate
house": and later he said, "I have met no man that had a prettier way
with the sword."

But Rodriguez held on to the end, telling all he had to tell; and
especially that he was landless and penniless but for that one promise;
and as for the sword, he said, he was but as a child playing before the
sword of Don Alderon. And this Don Alderon said was in no wise so,
though there were a few cunning passes that he had learned, hoping that
the day might come for him to do God a service thereby by slaying some
of the Moors: and heartily he gave his consent and felicitation. But
this Rodriguez would not have: "Come with me," he said, "to the forest
to the place where I met this man, and if we find him not there we will
go to the house in which his bowmen feast and there have news of him,
and he shall show us the castle of his promise and, if it be such a
castle as you approve, then your consent shall be given, but if not ..."

"Gladly indeed," said Don Alderon. "We will start tomorrow."

And Rodriguez took his words literally, though his host had meant no
more than what we should call "one of these days," but Rodriguez was
being consumed with a great impatience. And so they arranged it, and
Don Alderon went to bed with a feeling, which is favourable to dreams,
that on the next day they went upon an adventure; for neither he nor
anyone in that village had entered Shadow Valley.

Once more next morning Rodriguez walked with Serafina, with something
of the romance of the garden gone, for Dona Mirana walked there too;
and romance is like one of those sudden, wonderful colours that flash
for a moment out of a drop of dew; a passing shadow obscures them; and
ask another to see it, and the colour is not the same: move but a yard
and the ray of enchantment is gone. Dona Mirana saw the romance of that
garden, but she saw it from thirty years away; it was all different
what she saw, all changed from a certain day (for love was love in the
old days): and to Rodriguez and Serafina it seemed that she could not
see romance at all, and somehow that dimmed it. Almost their eyes
seemed to search amongst the azaleas for the romance of that other
evening.

And then Rodriguez told Serafina that he was riding away with her
brother to see about the affairs of his castle, and that they would
return in a few days.