he will lie badly," murmured Marcos, with his leisurely reflective
smile.

"I think," said Sarrion, after a pause, "nay, I feel sure that Francisco
left his fortune to Juanita at the last moment, as a forlorn
hope--leaving it to you and me to get her out of the hobble in which he
placed her. You know it was always his hope that you and Juanita should
marry."

But Marcos' face hardened, and he had nothing to say to this reiteration
of the dead man's hope. The silence was not again broken before Leon de
Mogente came in.

He looked from one to the other with an apprehensive glance. His pale
eyes had that dulness which betokens, if not an absorption in the things
to come, that which often passes for the same, an incompetence to face
the present moment.

"I was about to write to you," he said, addressing himself to Sarrion. "I
am having a mass celebrated tomorrow in the Cathedral. My father, I
know... "

"I shall be there," said Sarrion, rather shortly.

"And Marcos?"

"I, also," replied Marcos.

"One must do what one can," said Leon, with a resigned sigh.

Marcos, the man of action and not of words, looked at him and said
nothing. He was perhaps noticing that the dishonest boy had grown into a
dishonest man. Monastic religion is like a varnish, it only serves to
bring out the true colour, and is powerless to alter it by more than a
shade. Those who have lived in religious communities know that human
nature is the same there as in the world--that a man who is not
straightforward may grow in monastic zeal day by day, but he will never
grow straightforward. On the other hand, if a man be a good man, religion
will make him better, but it must not be a religion that runs to words.

Leon sat with folded hands and lowered eyes. He was a sort of amateur
monk, and, like all amateurs, he was apt to exaggerate outward signs. It
was Marcos who spoke at length.

"Do you intend," he asked in his matter-of-fact way, "to make any effort
to discover and punish your father's assassins?"

"I have been advised not to."

"By whom?"

Leon looked distressed. He was pained, it would seem, that the friend of
his childhood should step so bluntly on to delicate ground.

"It is a secret of the confession."

Marcos exchanged a grave glance with his father, who sat back in his
chair as one may see a leader sit back while his junior counsel conducts
an able cross-examination.

"Have you advised Juanita of the terms of her father'