up with Don John wheeled at a signal from the trumpets, and began
to ride slowly back to the city, pressing hard upon the multitude, and
before it was quite dark the square before the palace was deserted
again. The sky had cleared, the pavement was dry again, and the full
moon was rising. Two tall sentinels with halberds paced silently up and
down in the shadow.

Dolores and her sister were still sitting in the dark when the door
opened, and a grey-haired servant in red and yellow entered the room,
bearing two lighted wax candles in heavy bronze candlesticks, which he
set upon the table. A moment later he was followed by old Mendoza, still
in his breastplate, as he had dismounted, his great spurs jingling on
his heavy boots, and his long basket-hilted sword trailing on the marble
pavement. He was bareheaded now, and his short hair, smooth and
grizzled, covered his energetic head like a close-fitting skull cap of
iron-grey velvet. He stood still before the table, his bony right hand
resting upon it and holding both his long gloves. The candlelight shone
upward into his dark face, and gleamed yellow in his angry eyes.

Both the girls rose instinctively as their father entered; but they
stood close together, their hands still linked as if to defend each
other from a common enemy, though the hard man would have given his life
for either of them at any moment since they had come into the world.
They knew it, and trembled.

"You have made me the laughing-stock of the court," he began slowly, and
his voice shook with anger. "What have you to say in your defence?"

He was speaking to Dolores, and she turned a little pale. There was
something so cruelly hard in his tone and bearing that she drew back a
little, not exactly in bodily fear, but as a brave man may draw back a
step when another suddenly draws a weapon upon him. Instantly Inez moved
forward, raising one white hand in protest, and turning her blind face
to her father's gleaming eyes.

"I am not speaking to you," he said roughly, "but you," he went on,
addressing Dolores, and the heavy table shook under his hand. "What
devil possessed you that you should shame me and yourself, standing at
your window to smile at Don John, as if he were the Espadero at a bull
fight and you the beauty of the ring--with all Madrid there to look on,
from his Majesty the King to the beggar in the road? Have you no
modesty, no shame, no blood that can blush? And if not, have you not
eve