e trust themselves to
see. My place was distant and far below; yet my eyes were keen, and it
seemed to me that she looked thin and frail, though very beautiful. If for
an instant, since Dick broke the news to me, I had doubted the loyalty of
her heart, the sight of her sad young face would have driven doubt away. I
was more than ever certain that in promising to marry Carmona she thought
to save me from punishment threatened by him.

Neither he nor she guessed that I was near. But where did she believe me
to be? Perhaps Carmona had said that for her sake he had let me fly danger
after stabbing him in the cathedral, by hurrying back to England.

The Duke was leaning forward to speak to her. She did not look up at him,
but let her eyes listlessly travel over the vast audience. I thought they
lingered on _Tendido_ Number 9, draped with flowered shawls of Andalucia,
and crowded with pretty women. Suddenly she blushed, and turned away. I
looked where she had looked, and knew what had brought the blood to her
cheeks. Pilar, in rose colour, with a white mantilla and the orthodox
_malmaisons_, of pink and crimson, was gazing up at the Carmona box, an
imploring expression on her face. Pilar, too, was pale and thin. I
realized more and more that nearly six weeks had been struck out of my
life.

Each of the three coaches had in its turn stopped under the royal box,
while a ducal patron presented his cavalier to the young King and his
bride; now, the ring was being cleared as the magnificent amateur picadors
mounted their horses, which had been led round by squires in the quaint
dress of 1630. One of four dignified _alguaziles_ in black velvet and lace
doffed his plumed hat to the King as President of the fight, asking the
key of the bull's cell. Down it flashed, while the music stopped as if
awed into silence, and the _alguazil_ spurred his stallion across the
arena to fling into the _montera_ of _el Bunolero_, janitor of the bull
cells, the key he had received.

"Vivillo is fifth bull," I said to myself, repeating Dick's words; and
there, too, was his name on the programme of the fight. Pilar's favourite
had still a little time to draw the breath of life, stamping in the gloom
of his narrow _toril_. Not yet had that untamed neck of his been stung by
the rosetted dart flaunting his owner's colours; and much was to happen in
the arena before Vivillo's brave beauty would call for the clapping of
twice thirteen thousand hands.