oices came silvery and clear. That should have
been Inez de Mendoza's place if she had not been blind. But Inez had
never been willing to be there, though she had more than once found her
way to the gallery where the dwarf had stood, and had listened, and
smelled the odour of the wax candles and the perfumes that rose with the
heated air.

It was long before the great doors on the right hand of the canopy were
thrown open, but courtiers are accustomed from their childhood to long
waiting, and the greater part of their occupation at court is to see and
to be seen, and those who can do both and can take pleasure in either
are rarely impatient. Moreover, many found an opportunity of exchanging
quick words and of making sudden plans for meeting, who would have found
it hard to exchange a written message, and who had few chances of seeing
each other in the ordinary course of their lives; and others had waited
long to deliver a cutting speech, well studied and tempered to hurt, and
sought their enemies in the crowd with the winning smile a woman wears
to deal her keenest thrust. There were men, too, who had great interests
at stake and sought the influence of such as lived near the King,
flattering every one who could possibly be of use, and coolly
overlooking any who had a matter of their own to press, though they were
of their own kin. Many officers of Don John's army were there, too,
bright-eyed and bronzed from their campaigning, and ready to give their
laurels for roses, leaf by leaf, with any lady of the court who would
make a fair exchange--and of these there were not a few, and the time
seemed short to them. There were also ecclesiastics, but not many, in
sober black and violet garments, and they kept together in one corner
and spoke a jargon of Latin and Spanish which the courtiers could not
understand; and all who were there, the great courtiers and the small,
the bishops and the canons, the stout princesses laced to suffocation
and to the verge of apoplexy, and fanning themselves desperately in the
heat, and their slim, dark-eyed daughters, cool and laughing--they were
all gathered together to greet Spain's youngest and greatest hero, Don
John of Austria, who had won back Granada from the Moors.

As the doors opened at last, a distant blast of silver trumpets rang in
from without, and the full chorus of speaking voices was hushed to a
mere breathing that died away to breathless silence during a few moments
as the