tion.

"You have come to some decision?" Sarrion suggested.

"I have come to the usual decision that you are quite right in your
suspicions. They want that money, and they intend to get it by forcing
her into religion and inducing her to sign the usual testament made by
nuns, conferring all their earthly goods upon the order into which they
are admitted."

Then Sarrion went back to his original question.

"And...?"

"As soon as we see signs of their being likely to succeed I propose to
see Juanita again."

"You can do it despite them?"

"Yes, I can do it."

"And...?"

"I shall explain the position to her--that her bad fortune has given her
choice of two evils."

"That is one way of putting it."

"It is the only honest way."

Sarrion shrugged his shoulders.

"My friend," he said, "I do not think that love and honesty are much in
sympathy."

CHAPTER XII

IN A STRONG CITY
Amedeo, as the world knows, landed at Carthagena to be met by the news
that Prim was dead. The man who had summoned him hither to assume the
crown, he who alone in all Spain had the power and the will to maintain
order in the riven kingdom, had himself been summoned to appear before a
higher throne. "There will be no republic in Spain while I live," Prim
had often said. And Prim was dead.

"Every dog has his day," a deputy sneeringly observed to the Marshall
himself a few hours before he was shot, in response to Prim's
plain-spoken intention of striking with a heavy hand all those who should
manifest opposition to the Duke of Aosta.

So Amedeo of Spain rode into his capital one snowy day in January, 1871,
carrying high his head and looking down with courageous, intelligent eyes
upon the faces of the people who refused to cheer him, as upon a sea of
hidden rocks through which he must needs steer his hazardous way without
a pilot.

Before receiving the living he visited the dead man who may be assumed to
have been honest in his intention, as he undoubtedly proved himself to be
brave in action; the best man that Spain produced in her time of trouble.

Among the first to bow before the King were the two Sarrions, and as they
returned into an anteroom they came face to face with Evasio Mon, waiting
his turn there.

"Ah!" said Sarrion, who did not seem to see the hand that Mon had half
extended, "I did not know that you were a courtier."

"I am not," replied Mon; "but I am here to see whether I am too old to
learn."

He tu