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CHAPTER XIII

Dolores had not understood her father’s words.  All that was clear to her was that Don John was dead and that his murderers were gone.  Had there been danger still for herself, she could not have felt it; but there was none now as she laid her hand upon the key to enter the bedchamber.  At first the lock would not open, as it had been injured in some way by being so roughly shaken when Mendoza had tried it.  But Dolores’ desperate fingers wound themselves upon the key like little ropes of white silk, slender but very strong, and she wrenched at the thing furiously till it turned.  The door flew open, and she stood motionless a moment on the threshold.  Mendoza had said that Don John was dead, but she had not quite believed it.

He lay on his back as he had fallen, his feet towards her, his graceful limbs relaxed, one arm beside him, the other thrown back beyond his head, the colourless fingers just bent a little and showing the nervous beauty of the hand.  The beautiful young face was white as marble, and the eyes were half open, very dark under the waxen lids.  There was one little spot of scarlet on the white satin coat, near the left breast.  Dolores saw it all in the bright light of the candles, and she neither moved nor closed her fixed eyes as she gazed.  She felt that she was at the end of life; she stood still to see it all and to understand.  But though she tried to think, it was as if she had no mind left, no capacity for grasping any new thought, and no power to connect those that had disturbed her brain with the present that stared her in the face.  An earthquake might have torn the world open under her feet at that moment, swallowing up the old Alcazar with the living and the dead, and Dolores would have gone down to destruction as she stood, unconscious of her fate, her eyes fixed upon Don John’s dead features, her own life already suspended and waiting to follow his.  It seemed as if she might stand there till her horror should stop the beating of her own heart, unless something came to rouse her from the stupor she was in.

But gradually a change came over her face, her lids drooped and quivered, her face turned a little upward, and she grasped the doorpost with one hand, lest she should reel and fall.  Then, knowing that she could stand no longer, instinct made a last effort upon her; its invisible power thrust her violently forward in a few swift steps, till her strength broke all at once, and she fell and lay almost upon the body of her lover, her face hidden upon his silent breast, one hand seeking his hand, the other pressing his cold forehead.

It was not probable that any one should find her there for a long time.  The servants and gentlemen had been dismissed, and until it was known that Don John was dead, no one would come.  Even if she could have thought at all, she would not have cared who saw her lying there; but thought was altogether gone now, and there was nothing left but the ancient instinct of the primeval woman mourning her dead mate alone, with long-drawn, hopeless weeping and blinding tears.