Two days elapsed and Concepçion Vara made neither appearance nor sign. On the second evening Conyngham decided to go on alone, prosecuting his journey through the sparsely populated valley of the Alcadia to Ciudad Real, Toledo, and Madrid.
‘You will ride,’ the innkeeper told him, ‘from the Guadalquivir to the Guadiana, and if there is rain you may be a month upon the road.’
Conyngham set out in the early morning, and as he threw his leg across the saddle the sun rose over the far misty hills of Ronda, and Concepçion Vara awoke from his night’s rest under the wall of an olive terrace above the Bobadilla road, to begin another day of patient waiting and watching to get speech with the maid or the mistress; for he had already inaugurated what he lightly called ‘an affair’ with Julia’s flighty attendant. The sun rose also over the plains of Xeres, and lighted up the picturesque form of Esteban Larralde, in the saddle this hour and more, having learnt that Colonel Monreal’s death took place an hour before Conyngham’s arrival in the town of Xeres de la Frontera. The letter, therefore, had not been delivered to Colonel Monreal, and was still in Conyngham’s possession.
Larralde bestrode a shocking steed, and had but an indifferent seat in the saddle. Nevertheless, the dust rose beneath his horse’s feet, and his spurs flashed in the sunlight as this man of many parts hurried on towards Utrera and Cordova.
In the old Moorish palace in Ronda, General Vincente, summoned to a great council of war at Madrid, was making curt military preparations for his journey and the conveyance of his household to the capital. Señora Barenna was for the moment forgetful of her nerves in the excitement of despatching servants in advance to Toledo, where she owned a summer residence. Julia was nervously anxious to be on the road again, and showed by every word and action that restlessness of spirit which is the inheritance of hungry hearts. Estella, quiet and self-contained, attended to the details of moving a vast and formal household with a certain eagerness which in no way resembled Julia’s feverish haste. Estella seemed to be one of those happy people who know what they want.
Thus Frederick Conyngham, riding northward alone, seemed to be a pilot to all these persons into whose lives he had suddenly stepped as from a side issue, for they were one and all making ready to follow him to the colder plains of Castile, where existence was full of strife and ambition, of war and those inner wheels that ever jar and grind where politicians contend together for the mastery of a moment.