‘We met,’ he said, ‘for a moment in the garden of General Vincente’s house at Ronda.’
‘True,’ answered Sir John. ‘Are you leaving the Cathedral? We might walk a little way together. One cannot talk idly—here.’
He paused and looked up at the great oak screen—at the towering masonry.
‘No,’ answered Concha gravely. ‘One cannot talk idly here.’
Concha held back the great leathern _portière_, and the Englishman passed out.
‘This is a queer country, and you are a queer people,’ he said presently. ‘When I was at Ronda I met a certain number of persons—I can count them on my fingers. General Vincente, his daughter, Señora Barenna, Señorita Barenna, the Englishman Conyngham, yourself, Señor Concha. I arrived in Toledo yesterday morning; in twenty-four hours I have caught sight of all the persons mentioned, here in Toledo.’
‘And here, in Toledo, is another of whom you have not caught sight,’ said Concha.
They walked on in silence for some minutes.
‘What are we all doing here, Padre?’ inquired Sir John, with his cold laugh.
Sir John did not answer at once. They were walking leisurely. The streets were deserted, as indeed the streets of Toledo usually are.
‘I am putting two and two together,’ the great lawyer answered at length. ‘I began doing so in idleness, and now I have become interested.’
‘Yes. I have become interested. They say, Padre, that a pebble set in motion at the summit of a mountain may gather other pebbles and increase in bulk and speed until, in the form of an avalanche, it overwhelms a city in the valley.’
‘And I have conceived the strange fancy that Frederick Conyngham, when he first came to this country, set such a pebble in motion at the summit of a very high mountain. It has been falling and falling silently ever since, and it is gaining in bulk. And you, and General Vincente, and Estella Vincente, and Señorita Barenna, and Frederick Conyngham, and in a minor degree myself, are on the slope in the track of the avalanche, and are sliding down behind it. And the General and Estella, and yourself and Conyngham, are trying to overtake it and stop it. And, reverendo, in the valley below is the monarchy of Spain—the Bourbon cause.’
Father Concha, remembering his favourite maxim that no flies enter a shut mouth, was silent.