s of Eboli with you, and I gave her
permission to take you away to stay with her. You needed no disguise."

"I never saw her. She must have found Inez in the room. I was gone long
before that."

"Gone--where?" Mendoza was fast losing the thread of it all--in his
confusion of ideas he grasped the clue of his chief sorrow, which was
far beyond any thought for himself. "But if you are innocent--pray God
you may be, as you say--how is it possible--oh, no! I cannot believe
it--I cannot! No woman could do that--no innocent girl could stand out
before a multitude of men and women, and say what you said--"

"I hoped to save your life. I had the strength. I did it."

Her clear grey eyes looked into his, and his doubt began to break away
before the truth.

"Make me believe it!" he cried, his voice breaking. "Oh, God! Make me
believe it before I die!"

"It is true," she cried, in a low, strong voice that carried belief to
his breast in spite of such reasoning as still had some power over him.
"It is true, and you shall believe it; and if you will not, the man you
have killed, the man I loved and trusted, the dead man who knows the
whole truth as I know it, will come back from the dead to prove it
true--for I swear it upon his soul in heaven, and upon yours and mine
that will not be long on earth--as I will swear it in the hour of your
death and mine, since we must die!"

He could not take his eyes from hers that held him, and suddenly in the
pure depths he seemed to see her soul facing him without fear, and he
knew that what she said was true, and his tortured heart leapt up at the
good certainty.

"I believe you, my child," he said at last, and then his grey lids half
closed over his eyes and he bent down to her, and put his arm round her.

But she shuddered at the touch of his right hand, and though she knew
that he was a condemned man, and that she might never see him again, she
could not bear to receive his parting kiss upon her forehead.

"Oh, father, why did you kill him?" she asked, turning her head away and
moving to escape from his hold.

But Mendoza did not answer. His arm dropped by his side, and his face
grew white and stony. She was asking him to give up the King's secret,
to keep which he was giving his life. He felt that it would be treason
to tell even her. And besides, she would not keep the secret--what woman
could, what daughter would? It must go out of the world with him, if it
was to be safe. He g