Arthur stood for a moment irresolute and hesitating, but only for a moment.
"Let me thank you for enabling me to fulfil a duty without foregoing a pleasure. If your messenger is trustworthy and fleet it can be done. I will stay."
She turned towards him suddenly and smiled. A smile apparently so rare to that proud little mouth and those dark, melancholy eyes; a smile that disclosed the smallest and whitest of teeth in such dazzling contrast to the shadow of her face; a smile that even after its brightness had passed still left its memory in a dimple in either nut-brown cheek, and a glistening moisture in the dark eyes--that Arthur felt the warm blood rise to his face.
"There are writing materials in the other room. Diego will find you there," said Donna Dolores, "and I will rejoin you soon. Thanks."
She held out the smallest and brownest of hands. Arthur bent over it for a single moment, and then withdrew with a quickened pulse to the outer room. As the door closed upon him, Donna Dolores folded her fan, threw herself back upon the sofa, and called, in a quick whisper--
The old woman reappeared with an anxious face and ran towards the sofa. But she was loo late; her mistress had fainted.
Arthur's letter to his partners was a brief explanation of his delay, and closed with the following sentence--
"Search the records for any deed or transfer of the grant from Dr. Devarges."
He had scarcely concluded before Diego entered ready for the journey. When he had gone, Arthur waited with some impatience the reappearance of Donna Dolores. To his disappointment, however, only the solemn major-domo strode grimly into the room like a dark-complexioned ghost, and, as it seemed to Arthur, with a strong suggestion of the Commander in "Don Giovanni" in his manner, silently beckoned him to follow to the apartment set aside for his reception. In keeping with the sun-evading instincts of Spanish Californian architecture the room was long, low, and half lighted; the two barred windows on either side of the doorway gave upon the corridor and courtyard below; the opposite wall held only a small narrow, deeply-embrasured loop-hole, through which Arthur could see the vast, glittering, sun-illumined plain beyond. The hard, monotonous, unwinking glare without did not penetrate the monastic gloom of this chamber; even the insane, incessant restlessness of the wind that perpetually beset the bleak walls was unheard and unfelt in the grave, contemplative solitude of this religious cell.