completely absorbed in the
subject of their conversation, he was talking with his private secretary
Escovedo.

How animated his beautiful features became! how leonine he looked when
he indignantly shook his head with its wealth of golden hair!

Oh, yes! Women's hearts must indeed fly to him, and Barbara now
understood what she had heard of the beautiful Diana of Sorrento, and
the no less beautiful Alaria Mendoza, and their love for him.

Thus she had imagined him. Yet no! His outer man, in its proud patrician
beauty and winning charm, even surpassed her loftiest expectation. One
thing alone surprised her: the seriousness of his youthful features and
the lines upon his lofty brow.

Why did her favourite of fortune bear these traces of former anxieties?

Now the priest interrupted him. Had he told her John of her entrance?

Yet that was scarcely possible, for his face revealed no trace of filial
pleasure. On the contrary. He rallied his courage, as if he were about
to step into a cold river, straightened himself, and pressed his
right hand, clinched into a fist, upon his hip. Perhaps--the saints be
praised!--Father Dorante might have reminded him of something else, for
he turned to Escovedo again and gave him an order.

Then he waved his hand, flung back his handsome head as King Philip was
in the habit of doing, but in a far nobler, freer manner, hastily passed
his hand through his wavy hair, as if to strengthen his courage, and
then walked slowly, with haughty, almost arrogant dignity, to the door.

On the threshold he paused and looked at her. How bright were the
large blue eyes which now gazed at Barbara with an expression far more
searching than joyous.

Yet even while, with one hand resting on the back of the chair and the
other pressed upon her panting bosom, she was striving to find the right
words, Don John's glance brightened.

She was not mistaken. He had dreaded this meeting, and now with joyful
surprise was asking himself whether this could be the woman who had been
described to him as a showy, extremely whimsical, perverse person, who
used her son's renown to obtain access to aristocratic houses and as
many pleasures as possible.

She must at any rate have been remarkably beautiful, and how wonderfully
her delicately chiselled features had retained a charm which is usually
peculiar to youth! how well the now dull gold of her thick tresses
harmonized with the faint flush on the almost unwrinkled f