I stood staring blankly after the carriage, and then walked into the hotel feeling much like a man in a dream, dazzled by the beauty of the girl who had rendered me this inestimable service; and when I reached my room I threw open my window, gazed out over the moon-lit city, and steeped my senses in a maze of bewildering delight as I recalled the witchery of her inspiring voice, the glances of her lustrous, wonderful eyes, and the magnetic charm of her loveliness. At that moment the thoughts dearer to me than all else in the world were that she was so interested in me that she had done all this for my sake, that she was my cousin whose future and fortune her guardian wished me to protect and, above all, that I was to see her again on the morrow, and for many morrows. Madrid had become, instead of a place of exile, a veritable city of Blessed Promise.
How long I gazed out into the moonlight and rhapsodised in this fashion I do not know; but I do know that I had a sufficient interval of lucid commonsense to be conscious that I had fallen hopelessly in love with my cousin at first sight, and it was a source of rarest ecstasy to picture in fancy the great things I would achieve to serve her, and to hope that a chance of doing some of them would come my way. And when I got into bed and fell asleep it was to dream that I was doing them.
I am not exactly a rhapsodist by nature; and the lapse into wistful dreaminess had all the charm of the unusual for me; but the morning found me in a much more practical frame of mind.
I reviewed coolly the strange events which had heralded my arrival in Madrid, and certain points began to trouble me; that there should be someone of doubtful repute of the same name as my own, and that so glorious a creature as Sarita Castelar should be deeply mixed up with Carlists of such a desperate character as those who had menaced my life.
Those were the matters which needed to be cleared up first, and I would ask her freely about them that afternoon. But in the meantime prudence warned me to hold my tongue about everything.
I went to the Embassy to report myself, and afterwards had lunch and a long chat with my old friend, Mayhew. His knowledge on all matters and persons in Madrid was quite cyclopedic, and he told me a hundred and one things that would be useful for me to know. I need only refer to two subjects. We were speaking of Spanish politics when he mentioned a name that kindled suddenly all my interest.