upted. "The Emperor Charles took care to make
the bond which united me to him cruelly hateful, and therefore I am not
at all anxious to inform the world how close it once was."

Here Don Luis bit his lips, and a frown contracted his brow. Yet he
controlled himself, and asked with barely perceptible excitement,
"Then I may inform his Majesty that you would be disposed to keep this
secret?"

"Yes," she answered curtly.

"But, so far as the convent is concerned, you persist in your refusal?"

"Even a noble and kind man would never induce me to take the veil."

Now Quijada lost his composure, and with increasing indignation
exclaimed: "Of all the men on earth there is probably not one who cares
as little for the opinion of an arrogant woman wounded in her vanity. He
stands so far above your judgment that it is insulting him to undertake
his defence. In short, you will not go to the convent?"

"No, and again no!" she protested bitterly. "Besides, your promise ought
to bind you to still greater brevity. But it seems to please your noble
nature to insult a defenceless, ill-treated woman. True, perhaps it is
done on behalf of the mighty man who stands so far above me."

"How far, you will yet learn to your harm," replied Don Luis, once
more master of himself. "As for the child, you still seem determined
to withhold it from the man who will recognise it as his solely on this
condition?"

Barbara thought it time to drop the restraint maintained with so much
difficulty, and half with the intention of letting Charles's favourite
hear the anguish that oppressed her heart, half carried away by the
resentment which filled her soul, she permitted it to overflow and, in
spite of the pain which it caused her to raise her voice, she ceased
whispering, and cried: "You ask to hear what I intend to do? Nothing,
save to keep what is mine! Though I know how much you dislike me, Don
Luis Quijada, I call upon you to witness whether I have a right to this
child and to consideration from its father; for when you, his messenger
of love, led me for the first time to the man who now tramples me so
cruelly under his feet, you yourself heard him greet me as the sun which
was again rising for him. But that is forgotten! If his will is not
executed, mother and child may perish in darkness and misery. Well,
then, will against will! He has the right to cease to love me and to
thrust me from him, but it is mine to hate him from my inmost soul, and