“You strangely forget yourself,” he said, with an appearance of dignity.  “You spring forward as if you were going to grapple with me, and then you are surprised that I should be ready to defend myself.”

“I barely moved a step from where I stand,” answered Don John, with profound contempt.  “I am unarmed, too.  There lies my sword, on the table.  But since you are the King as well as my brother, I make all excuses to your Majesty for having been the cause of your fright.”

Dolores understood what had happened, as Don John meant that she should.  She knew also that her position was growing more and more desperate and untenable at every moment; yet she could not blame her lover for what he had said.  Even to save her, she would not have had him cringe to the King and ask pardon for his hasty word and movement, still less could she have borne that he should not cry out in protest at a word that insulted her, though ever so lightly.

“I do not desire to insist upon our kinship,” said Philip coldly.  “If I chose to acknowledge it when you were a boy, it was out of respect for the memory of the Emperor.  It was not in the expectation of being called brother by the son of a German burgher’s daughter.”

Don John did not wince, for the words, being literally true and without exaggeration, could hardly be treated as an insult, though they were meant for one, and hurt him, as all reference to his real mother always did.

“Yes,” he said, still scornfully.  “I am the son of a German burgher’s daughter, neither better nor worse.  But I am your brother, for all that, and though I shall not forget that you are King and I am subject, when we are before the world, yet here, we are man and man, you and I, brother and brother, and there is neither King nor prince.  But I shall not hurt you, so you need fear nothing.  I respect the brother far too little for that, and the sovereign too much.”

There was a bad yellow light in Philip’s face, and instead of walking towards Don John and away from him, as he had done hitherto, he began to pace up and down, crossing and recrossing before him, from the foot of the great canopied bed to one of the curtained windows, keeping his eyes upon his brother almost all the time.

“I warned you when I came here that your words should be remembered,” he said.  “And your actions shall not be forgotten, either.  There are safe places, even in Madrid, where you can live in the retirement you desire so much, even in total solitude.”

“If it pleases your Majesty to imprison Don John of Austria, you have the power.  For my part, I shall make no resistance.”