ain, not in a word yet, but yet not in a groan of pain.
His eyes, that had been half open and staring, closed with a look of
rest, and colour rose slowly in his cheeks. Then he felt her breath, and
his strength returned for an instant, his arms contracted and clasped
her to him violently.

"Dolores!" he cried, and in a moment his lips rained kisses on her face,
while his eyes were still closed.

Then he sank back again exhausted, and her arm kept his head from
striking the marble floor. The girl's cheek flushed a deep red, as she
tried to speak, and her words came broken and indistinct.

"I am not Dolores," she managed to say. "I am Inez--"

But he did not hear, for he was swooning again, and the painful blush
sank down again, as she realized that he was once more unconscious. She
wondered whether the room were dark or whether there were lights, or
whether he had not opened his eyes when he had kissed her. His head was
very heavy on her arm. With her other hand she drew off the hood she
wore and rolled it together, and lifting him a little she made a pillow
of it so that he rested easily. He had not recognized her, and she
believed he was dying, he had kissed her, and all eternity could not
take from her the memory of that moment. In the wild confusion of her
thoughts she was almost content that he should die now, for she had felt
what she had never dared to feel in sweetest dreams, and it had been
true, and no one could steal it away now, nor should any one ever know
it, not even Dolores herself. The jealous thought was there, in the
whirlwind of her brain, with all the rest, sudden, fierce, and strong,
as if Don John had been hers in life, and as if the sister she loved so
dearly had tried to win him from her. He was hers in death, and should
be hers for ever, and no one should ever know. It did not matter that he
had taken her for another, his kisses were her own. Once only had a
man's lips, not her father's, touched her cheek, and they had been the
lips of the fairest, and best, and bravest man in the world, her idol
and her earthly god. He might die now, and she would follow him, and in
the world beyond God would make it right somehow, and he, and she, and
her sister would all be but one loving soul for ever and ever. There was
no reasoning in all that--it was but the flash of wild thoughts that all
seemed certainties.

But Don John of Austria was neither dead nor dying. His brother's sword
had pierced his dou