“Gonsalvo,” said the Lady of the Tower, addressing her lord, “it is surely time that Señor Gulvarez married.”
“Gulvarez?” he said.
“He is past thirty-five,” she answered.
“But his castle is small and dark,” said he, “and much of it bare rock. Who would live there with him?”
“The Duke of Shadow Valley,” she said, “is to stay with him on a visit.”
And so said everyone who spoke of Gulvarez, and many spoke of him now who had thought little about him hitherto.
The Lord of the Tower and Rocky Forest reflected one silent moment. “But he is a greedy man,” he said, “and will demand a dowry such as a man cannot give.”
“It is not for us to punish his greed,” she said. “Those that cannot pay his dowry must go without him.”
“But the coffer,” he explained, “that I have set apart for Mirandola’s dowry is empty. I saw it only lately.”
“Ramon Alonzo will fill it for us,” she answered with as much faith in her husband’s scheme as he himself had had when it was new to him. And her hopefulness set him pondering as to whether all was wholly well with his scheme. And in the end of his pondering, although he said nothing to her, he decided that the time was come to renew his exhortations to his son.
For this purpose he sent Peter, from the garden, with a message to a certain Father Joseph, who dwelt not far away, asking him to come to the Tower. For he needed Father Joseph in order to write a letter to Ramon Alonzo, not deeming this to be a suitable occasion on which to employ his own skill with the pen, the art of which he had learned a long while ago. And before Father Joseph came he called Mirandola, and spoke with her in the same room as that in which he had had the long talk with his son, the room on the walls of which he hung his boar-spears.
“Mirandola,” he said, “you must surely one day marry, and are now well past fifteen, and it not seldom happens that those that marry not when they may, come soon to a time when none will marry them, so that they are spinsters all their days. What now think you of our neighbour Gulvarez, whom some have called handsome?”
A look like one of those flashes from storms too far for thunder lit for one moment Mirandola’s eyes. Then she smiled again.
“Gulvarez?” she said to her father.
“Yes,” he said. “He tends a little perhaps toward avarice,” for he thought he had seen the look in his daughter’s eyes, “but there are many worse sins than that, many worse, if it be a sin at all, which is by no means clear, but I will ask Father Joseph about that for you, I will ask him at once. For myself I believe it to be no sin, but a fault. But we shall ask, we shall ask.”
“As you will,” she said.
“You like him then,” said her father. “He is not ill to look on; two women not long since have called him handsome. And he is a friend of the Duke of Shadow Valley.”
“I like him not yet,” she said. “But haply if he come …”
“Yes,” said he, “he shall come to visit us.”
“If he come with his friend,” said she.
“We cannot ask that,” he said in gentle reproof. “He could not bring the duke to visit us.”
“Then he is not his friend,” said Mirandola.
Thus lightly was brushed away the claim of Gulvarez to the excited interest of all that neighbourhood.
The Lord of the Tower held up his hand to check her hasty utterance while he thought of appropriate words with which to reprove her error. And when he found no suitable words at all, with which to show his daughter she was mistaken, and yet felt the need to speak, he said that he would consult Gulvarez on this; which he had not intended to say. And afterwards, conferring with his wife, they did not find between them a ready reason for refusing this curious whim of their dark-haired daughter; and in the end they decided to humour her, judging it best to do so at such a time, though both of them feared the arrival, if indeed he should ever come, of that dread Magnifico and illustrious prince, the serene and potent Duke of Shadow Valley.
Then Father Joseph came. He had walked scarce a mile, but he had hurried to do the Lord of the Tower’s bidding, and, being now slender no longer, he panted heavily; and his tonsure shone warm and damp so that there was a light about it. He held that before all else are the things of the spirit, and in many ways he sought their triumph on earth; and for this purpose was ever swift to do the behests of the Lord of the Tower, who in that small neighbourhood at the edge of the forest had such power as is permitted on earth, which Father Joseph hoped to turn towards heavenly uses. Therefore he came running.
“In what can I serve you?” he said.
The Lord of the Tower motioned him to a chair.
“Long ago,” he said, “I learned the art of writing in
