“No,” answered Dolores, with authority.  “You cannot help me, dearest, and it would hurt you, and you must not come.”

“Then I will stay here,” said Inez sorrowfully.  “I shall be nearer to him,” she added under her breath.

“Stay here—­yes.  I will come back to you, and then—­then we will go in together, and say a prayer—­his soul can hear us still—­we will go and say good-by to him—­together.”

Her voice was almost firm, and Inez could not see the agony in her white face.  Then Dolores clasped her in her arms and kissed her forehead and her blind eyes very lovingly, and pressed her head to her own shoulders and patted it and smoothed the girl’s dark hair.

“I will come back,” she said, “and, Inez—­you know the truth, my darling.  Whatever evil they may say of me after to-night, remember that I have said it of myself for our father’s sake, and that it is not true.”

“No one will believe it,” answered Inez.  “They will not believe anything bad of you.”

“Then our father must die.”

Dolores kissed her once more and made her sit down, then turned and went away.  She walked quickly along the corridors and descended the second staircase, to enter the throne room by the side door reserved for the officers of the household and the maids of honour.  She walked swiftly, her head erect, one hand holding the folds of her cloak pressed to her bosom, and the other, nervously clenched, and hanging down, as if she were expecting to strike a blow.

She reached the door, and for a moment her heart stopped beating, and her eyes closed.  She heard many loud voices within, and she knew that most of the court must still be assembled.  It was better that all the world should hear her—­even the King, if he were still there.  She pushed the door open and went in by the familiar way, letting the dark cloak that covered her court dress fall to the ground as she passed the threshold.  Half a dozen young nobles, grouped near the entrance, made way for her to pass.

When they recognized her, their voices dropped suddenly, and they stared after her in astonishment that she should appear at such a time.  She was doubtless in ignorance of what had happened, they thought.  As for the throng in the hall, there was no restraint upon their talk now, and words were spoken freely which would have been high treason half an hour earlier.  There was the noise, the tension, the ceaseless talking, the excited air, that belong to great palace revolutions.

The press was closer near the steps of the throne, where the King and Mendoza had stood, for after they had left the hall, surrounded and protected by the guards, the courtiers had crowded upon one another, and those near the further door and outside it in the outer apartments had pressed in till there was scarcely standing room on the floor of the hall.  Dolores found it hard to advance.  Some made way for her with low exclamations of surprise, but others, not looking to see who she was, offered a passive resistance to her movements.