“Come,” he said softly, when he had waited a long time, and when he thought she was growing more quiet.  “You must let me take you away, Dona Maria Dolores, for we cannot stay here.”

“Take me back to him,” she answered.  “Let me go back to him!”

“No—­to your father—­I cannot take you to him.  You will be safe there.”

Dolores sprang to her feet before the dwarf could prevent her.

“To my father? oh, no, no, no!  Never, as long as I live!  I will go anywhere, but not to him!  Take your hands from me—­do not touch me!  I am not strong, but I shall kill you if you try to take me to my father!”

Her small hands grasped the dwarfs wrists and wrung them with desperate energy, and she tried to push him away, so that she might pass him.  But he resisted her quietly, planting himself in a position of resistance on his short bowed legs, and opposing the whole strength of his great arms to her girlish violence.  Her hands relaxed suddenly in despair.

“Not to my father!” she pleaded, in a broken voice.  “Oh, please, please—­not to my father!”

The jester did not fully understand, but he yielded, for he could not carry her to Mendoza’s apartments by force.

“But what can I do to put you in a place of safety?” he asked, in growing distress.  “You cannot stay here.”

While he was speaking a light figure glided out from the shadows, with outstretched hands, and a low voice called Dolores’ name, trembling with terror and emotion.  Dolores broke from the dwarf and clasped her sister in her arms.

“Is it true?” moaned Inez.  “Is it true?  Is he dead?” And her voice broke.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XIV

The courtiers had assembled again in the great throne room after supper, and the stately dancing, for which the court of Spain was even then famous throughout Europe, had begun.  The orchestra was placed under the great arch of the central window on a small raised platform draped with velvets and brocades that hung from a railing, high enough to conceal the musicians as they sat, though some of the instruments and the moving bows of the violins could be seen above it.

The masked dancing, if it were dancing at all, which had been general in the days of the Emperor Maximilian, and which had not yet gone out of fashion altogether at the imperial court of Vienna, had long been relegated to the past in Spain, and the beautiful “pavane” dances, of which awkward travesties survive in our day, had been introduced instead.  As now, the older ladies of the court withdrew to the sides of the hall, leaving the polished floor free for those who danced, and sets formed themselves in the order of their rank from the foot of the throne dais to the lower end.  As now, too, the older and graver men congregated together in outer rooms; and there gaming-tables were set out, and the nobles lost vast