Then there were greetings, and questions to Ramon Alonzo, which he did not need to answer, for there were so many that he could not have answered one without interrupting the next. And when there began to be fewer, and the time was come for answers, he was able to choose the questions to which answers were easiest made. And he thought that Mirandola sometimes helped him when difficult questions were asked of the making of gold: certainly her own questions were sometimes frivolous, though whether they came of her frivolity or her wisdom he was not quite sure.
His mother asked him: “Is magic difficult?”
His father said: “Have you as yet made much gold?”
And Mirandola asked: “Can you bring up a rabbit from under an empty sombrero?”
But there were too many questions for record, and most of them were but a form of affectionate greeting and did not look for answers.
Soon, however, the Lord of the Tower and Rocky Forest sought to detach his son from the rest of the little group in order to talk with him precisely upon the matter of business. And this he achieved, though not easily, because of Mirandola. And even then Mirandola chanced within hearing, so that at last he had to say to her: “Mirandola, we speak of business.”
And to definite questions of the making of gold Ramon Alonzo found it difficult to reply now that his sister was no longer nigh to help him. He trusted her bright perceptions so much that he well believed the love-potion she had sought would better avail her than the gold that their father demanded, but he could not reveal her secret, and so found it difficult, without a sound training in business, to give exact accounts of gold that was not actually in existence. Chiefly he sheltered behind the technique of magic, withholding no information from his father on the matter of transmutation, on the contrary giving him much, yet shrewdly perceiving that these learned technicalities confused the matter in hand, and led as surely away from it as the paths in a maze that run in the right direction soon lead their followers wrong. For some while this talk continued, and though Ramon Alonzo had no skill to write a prospectus he none the less evaded the absence of gold and protected his sister’s secret. And as they spoke they drew toward the house, and it was not long before they entered the little banquet-chamber. And there, while Ramon Alonzo ate to his heart’s content, the Lord of the Tower told him of Gulvarez. “Somewhat a greedy man, I fear,” he explained. “And one that will bargain long and subtly in the matter of Mirandola’s dowry, for which reason the gold is urgent.”
Ramon Alonzo said nothing, thinking of the gross man whom he had once seen and of whom he had often heard.
“Yet if we refuse to close with him,” continued his father, “whom shall we find in these parts for Mirandola? Will one come from the forest? No. And we are not such as can go to Madrid. The worst of Gulvarez’s demands will cost us less than that.”
And he laid his hand thoughtfully on the empty silver box that he now kept in the room with him, into which they had come from the scene of Ramon Alonzo’s repast, the room where his boar-spears hung.
“Could we not wait awhile?” said Ramon Alonzo.
“No, no,” said his father smiling and shaking his head. “It is too easy to wait awhile in youth. It is thus that the greatest opportunities pass. Even as you wait youth passes. Ah well, well.”
No more said Ramon Alonzo; and his father fell to contemplating the future silently and with quiet content; and from this, the day being warm, he grew somewhat drowsy and scarcely noticed his son, who thereupon went back again to the garden while the state of the shadows allowed him to walk abroad without yet attracting notice.
There he spoke some while with his mother, unable to get away to Mirandola; and all the while the shadows were wasting. And at last his mother turned to the cool of the house and he made hasty farewells, pleading the urgency of work, promising to return soon, and leaving her before he had quite explained why he had come; while she warned him not to set too much store by magic, beyond what would be required to please his father. Then he went to Mirandola in another part of the garden. And the shadows grew shorter and shorter.
As he spoke with Mirandola he hastened with her to the edge of the forest to gain the protection of the oaks, whose mighty shadows he had come to envy. And as they went he said to her: “Our father has arranged that you marry Señor Gulvarez.”
“He hath,” she said.
“Mirandola,” he said, “is he not a trifle gross, Señor Gulvarez? Might he not, though pleasing at first, grow however slightly tedious when he grew older, and become, though never irksome, yet of less charm, less elegance, as the years went by?”
But Mirandola broke into soft peals of laughter, which long continued, until they said farewell, and Ramon Alonzo walked alone through the forest.
XVI
The Work of Father Joseph
Mirandola came back from the edge of the forest wondering, over wild heath to the garden. It had been her wont to know what her brother did, and even what he thought. But now he had some thought that she did not know, and it was at this that she wondered. She considered all the events that she thought might touch her
