And now I must tell how I met my cousin and my enemy de Garcia for the
second time. Two days after my meeting with the veiled lady it chanced
that I was wandering towards midnight through a lonely part of the old
city little frequented by passers-by. It was scarcely safe to be thus
alone in such a place and hour, but the business with which I had been
charged by my master was one that must be carried out unattended. Also I
had no enemies whom I knew of, and was armed with the very sword that I
had taken from de Garcia in the lane at Ditchingham, the sword that had
slain my mother, and which I bore in the hope that it might serve to
avenge her. In the use of this weapon I had grown expert enough by now,
for every morning I took lessons in the art of fence.
My business being done I was walking slowly homeward, and as I went I
fell to thinking of the strangeness of my present life and of how far it
differed from my boyhood in the valley of the Waveney, and of many other
things. And then I thought of Lily and wondered how her days passed, and
if my brother Geoffrey persecuted her to marry him, and whether or no
she would resist his importunities and her father's. And so as I walked
musing I came to a water-gate that opened on to the Guadalquivir, and
leaning upon the coping of a low wall I rested there idly to consider
the beauty of the night.
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