Presently a shutter in the woodwork was drawn, and a
white face peeped through the grating and spoke. My companion answered
in a low voice, and after some delay the door was opened, and I found
myself in a large walled garden planted with orange trees. Then the
abbess spoke to me.
'I have led you to our house,' she said. 'If you know where you are, and
what its name may be, for your own sake I pray you forget it when you
leave these doors.'
I made no answer, but looked round the dim and dewy garden.
Here it was doubtless that de Garcia had met that unfortunate who must
die this night. A walk of a hundred paces brought us to another door in
the wall of a long low building of Moorish style. Here the knocking and
the questioning were repeated at more length. Then the door was opened,
and I found myself in a passage, ill lighted, long and narrow, in the
depths of which I could see the figures of nuns flitting to and fro like
bats in a tomb. The abbess walked down the passage till she came to a
door on the right which she opened. It led into a cell, and here she
left me in the dark. For ten minutes or more I stayed there, a prey to
thoughts that I had rather forget. At length the door opened again, and
she came in, followed by a tall priest whose face I could not see, for
he was dressed in the white robe and hood of the Dominicans that left
nothing visible except his eyes.
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