ps," added Calderon, smiling, "a
courtier may manage such an intrigue with even more dexterity than a
soldier. I will bear her to the house we spoke of; there I know she can
lie hid in safety, till the languid pursuit of uninterested officials
shall cease, and thence I can easily find means to transport her, under
safe and honourable escort, to any place it may please you to appoint."

"And think you Beatriz will fly with you, a stranger? Impossible! Your
plan pleases me not."

"Nor does it please me," said Calderon, coldly; "the risks I proposed
to run are too imminent to be contemplated complacently: I thank you for
releasing me from my offer; nor should I have made it, Fonseca, but
from this fear, what if to-morrow the duke himself (he is a churchman,
remember) see the novice? what if he terrify her with threats against
yourself? what if he induce the abbess and the Church to abridge the
novitiate? what if Beatriz be compelled or awed into taking the veil?
what if you be released even next week and find her lost to you for
ever?"

"They cannot--they dare not!"

"The duke dares all things for ambition; your alliance with Beatriz he
would hold a disgrace to his house. Think not my warnings are without
foundation--I speak from authority; such is the course the Duke de Lerma
has resolved upon. Nothing else could have induced me to offer to
brave for your sake all the hazard of outraging the law and braving the
terrors of the Inquisition. But let us think of some other plan. Is
your escape possible? I fear not. No; you must trust to my chance of
persuading the duke into prosecuting the matter no further; trust
to some mightier scheme engrossing all his thoughts; to a fit of
good-humour after his siesta; or, perhaps, an attack of the gout, or a
stroke of apoplexy. Such, after all, are the chances of human felicity,
the pivots on which turns the solemn wheel of human life."

Fonseca made no reply for some moments; he traversed the room with hasty
and disordered strides, and at last stopped abruptly.

"Calderon, there is no option; I must throw myself on your generosity,
your faith, your friendship. I will write to Beatriz; I will tell her,
for my sake, to confide in you."

As he spoke, Don Martin turned to the table, and wrote a hasty and
impassioned note, in which he implored the novice to trust herself to
the directions of Don Roderigo Calderon, his best, his only friend; and,
as he placed this letter in the hands