y that Mendoza found himself alone with Dolores, almost as
by a surprise. In his desperate mood he resented what Ruy Gomez had
done, as an interference in his family affairs, and he bent his bushy
brows together as he stood facing Dolores, with folded arms. Four hours
had not passed since they had last spoken together alone in his own
dwelling; there was a lifetime of tragedy between that moment and this.

Dolores had not spoken since he had pushed her away. She stood beside a
chair, resting one hand upon it, dead white, with the dark shadow of
pain under her eyes, her lips almost colourless, but firm, and evenly
closed. There were lines of suffering in her young face that looked as
if they never could be effaced. It seemed to her that the worst conflict
of all was raging in her heart as she watched her father's face, waiting
for the sound of his voice; and as for him, he would rather have gone
back to the King's presence to be tormented under the eyes of Antonio
Perez than stand there, forced to see her and speak to her. In his eyes,
in the light of what he had been told, she was a ruined and shameless
woman, who had deceived him day in, day out, for more than two years.
And to her, so far as she could understand, he was the condemned
murderer of the man she had so innocently and truly loved. But yet, she
had a doubt, and for that possibility, she had cast her good name to the
winds in the hope of saving his life. At one moment, in a vision of
dread, she saw his armed hand striking at her lover--at the next she
felt that he could never have struck the blow, and that there was an
unsolved mystery behind it all. Never were two innocent human beings so
utterly deceived, each about the other.

"Father," she said, at last, in a trembling tone, "can you not speak to
me, if I can find heart to hear you?"

"What can we two say to each other?" he asked sternly. "Why did you stop
me? I am ready to die for killing the man who ruined you. I am glad. Why
should I say anything to you, and what words can you have for me? I hope
your end may come quickly, with such peace as you can find from your
shame at the last. That is what I wish for you, and it is a good wish,
for you have made death on the scaffold look easy to me, so that I long
for it. Do you understand?"

"Condemned to death!" she cried out, almost incoherently, before he had
finished speaking. "But they cannot condemn you--I have told them that I
was there--that it was n