the splash of the fountain, on a little
round table between two chairs, stood a many-branched candlestick.
The duenna sat down opposite Don Balthasar. A multitude of stars was
suspended over the breathless peace of the court.

"Senorita," I began, mustering all my courage, and all my Spanish, "I do
not know------"

She was walking by my side with upright carriage and a nonchalant step,
and shut her fan smartly.

"Don Carlos himself had given me the dagger," she said rapidly.

The fan flew open; a touch of the wind fanning her person came faintly
upon my cheek with a suggestion of delicate perfume.

She noticed my confusion, and said, "Let us walk to the end, Senor."

The old man and the duenna had cards in their hands now. The intimate
tone of her words ravished me into the seventh heaven.

"Ah," she said, when we were out of ear-shot, "I have the spirit of my
house; but I am only a weak girl. We have taken this resolution because
of your _hidal-guidad_, because you are our kinsman, because you are
English. _Ay de mi!_ Would I had been a man. My father needs a son in
his great, great age. Poor father! Poor Don Carlos!"

There was the catch of a sob in the shadow of the end gallery. We turned
back, and the undulation of her walk seemed to throw me into a state of
exaltation.

"On the word of an Englishman------" I began.

The fan touched my arm. The eyes of the duenna glittered over the cards.

"This woman belongs to that man, too," muttered Seraphina. "And yet she
used to be faithful--almost a mother. _Misericordia!_ Senor, there is no
one in this unhappy place that he has not bought, corrupted, frightened,
or bent to his will--to his madness of hate against England. Of our poor
he has made a rabble. The bishop himself is afraid."

Such was the beginning of our first conversation in this court
suggesting the cloistered peace of a convent. We strolled to and fro;
she dropped her eyelids, and the agitation of her mind, pictured in the
almost fierce swiftness of her utterance, made a wonderful contrast to
the leisurely rhythm of her movements, marked by the slow beating of
the fan. The retirement of her father from the world after her mother's
death had made a great solitude round his declining years. Yes, that
sorrow, and the base intrigues of that man--a fugitive, a hanger-on
of her mother's family--recommended to Don Balthasar's grace by her
mother's favour. Yes! He had, before she died, thrown his baneful