A moment of silence ensued.

"Hardly in the newspaper style, I should think," retorted Mr.
Blunt, with one of his grins that made me doubt the stability of
his feelings and the consistency of his outlook in regard to his
whole tale. "My mother's maid took it in a fiacre very late one
evening to the Pavilion and brought an answer scrawled on a scrap
of paper: 'Write your messages at once' and signed with a big
capital R. So my mother sat down again to her charming writing
desk and the maid made another journey in a fiacre just before
midnight; and ten days later or so I got a letter thrust into my
hand at the avanzadas just as I was about to start on a night
patrol, together with a note asking me to call on the writer so
that she might allay my mother's anxieties by telling her how I
looked.

"It was signed R only, but I guessed at once and nearly fell off my
horse with surprise."

"You mean to say that Dona Rita was actually at the Royal
Headquarters lately?" exclaimed Mills, with evident surprise.
"Why, we--everybody--thought that all this affair was over and done
with."

"Absolutely. Nothing in the world could be more done with than
that episode. Of course the rooms in the hotel at Tolosa were
retained for her by an order from Royal Headquarters. Two garret-
rooms, the place was so full of all sorts of court people; but I
can assure you that for the three days she was there she never put
her head outside the door. General Mongroviejo called on her