nd she tried to push him away, so that she might pass him. But
he resisted her quietly, planting himself in a position of resistance on
his short bowed legs, and opposing the whole strength of his great arms
to her girlish violence. Her hands relaxed suddenly in despair.

"Not to my father!" she pleaded, in a broken voice. "Oh, please,
please--not to my father!"

The jester did not fully understand, but he yielded, for he could not
carry her to Mendoza's apartments by force.

"But what can I do to put you in a place of safety?" he asked, in
growing distress. "You cannot stay here."

While he was speaking a light figure glided out from the shadows, with
outstretched hands, and a low voice called Dolores' name, trembling with
terror and emotion. Dolores broke from the dwarf and clasped her sister
in her arms.

"Is it true?" moaned Inez. "Is it true? Is he dead?" And her voice
broke.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XIV

The courtiers had assembled again in the great throne room after supper,
and the stately dancing, for which the court of Spain was even then
famous throughout Europe, had begun. The orchestra was placed under the
great arch of the central window on a small raised platform draped with
velvets and brocades that hung from a railing, high enough to conceal
the musicians as they sat, though some of the instruments and the moving
bows of the violins could be seen above it.

The masked dancing, if it were dancing at all, which had been general in
the days of the Emperor Maximilian, and which had not yet gone out of
fashion altogether at the imperial court of Vienna, had long been
relegated to the past in Spain, and the beautiful "pavane" dances, of
which awkward travesties survive in our day, had been introduced
instead. As now, the older ladies of the court withdrew to the sides of
the hall, leaving the polished floor free for those who danced, and sets
formed themselves in the order of their rank from the foot of the throne
dais to the lower end. As now, too, the older and graver men congregated
together in outer rooms; and there gaming-tables were set out, and the
nobles lost vast sums at games now long forgotten, by the express
authorization of the pious Philip, who saw that everything which could
injure the fortunes of the grandees must consolidate his own, by
depriving them of some of that immense wealth which was an ever-ready
element of revolution. He did everything in