He returned after awhile, and, beckoning to Derrick, led him to a bedroom.
"Yours, senor, by her Excellency's instructions." He disappeared, but presently returned and laid a pile of clothes on the bed with another, "Yours, senor.

I will await you." With a feeling of bewilderment, of unreality, Derrick changed into the fresh clothes slowly, eyeing and touching them as if he suspected something of magic in them.
A little while afterwards the major-domo appeared and led him into a luxuriously-furnished room.

Donna Elvira was reclining in a chair; she inclined her head slightly and motioned him to be seated opposite her.
At his entrance she had shot one swift glance at him, her brows had drawn together, and her lips had quivered; but now she sat calmly, her hands clasped tightly in her lap.

Derrick was the first to speak.
"I want to thank you, senora, for your great kindness to me," he said, with all a man's awkwardness.

"It is all the greater because I am a stranger, a man you know nothing about----" He paused at this, and his face grew red, for the story of the forged cheque flashed across his mind.
She raised her eyes and looked at him.
"It is nothing," she said, in a low voice.