He was too much stunned to ask himself how the lovers had met, if there
had been any agreement between them, but the frightful conviction took
hold of him that this was not the first time, that long ago, before Don
John had led the army to Granada, Dolores had found her way to that same
door and had spent long hours with her lover when no one knew. Else she
could not have gone to him without agreement, at an instant's notice, on
the very night of his return.

Despair took possession of the unhappy man from that moment. But that
the King was with Don John, Mendoza would have gone back at that moment
to kill his enemy and himself afterwards, if need be. He remembered his
errand then. No doubt that was the very room where Dolores had been
concealed, and she had escaped from it by some other way, of which her
father did not know. He was too dazed to think connectedly, but he had
the King's commands to execute at once. He straightened himself with a
great effort, for the weight of his years had come upon him suddenly and
bowed him like a burden. With the exertion of his will came the thirst
for the satisfaction of blood, and he saw that the sooner he returned
with the key, the sooner he should be near his enemy. But the pulses
came and went in his throbbing temples, as when a man is almost spent in
a struggle with death, and at first he walked uncertainly, as if he felt
no ground under his feet.

By the time he had gone a hundred yards he had recovered a sort of
mechanical self-possession, such as comes upon men at very desperate
times, when they must not allow themselves to stop and think of what is
before them. They were pictures, rather than thoughts, that formed
themselves in his brain as he went along, for he saw all the past years
again, from the day when his young wife had died, he being then already
in middle age, until that afternoon. One by one the years came back, and
the central figure in each was the fair-haired little child, growing
steadily to be a woman, all coming nearer and nearer to the end he had
seen but now, which was unutterable shame and disgrace, and beyond which
there was nothing. He heard the baby voice again, and felt the little
hands upon his brow, and saw the serious grey eyes close to his own; and
then the girl, gravely lovely--and her far-off laugh that hardly ever
rippled through the room when he was there; and then the stealing
softness of grown maidenhood, winning the features one by one,