“I have nothing to say to my daughter,” said Mendoza harshly; but the words seemed to hurt him.

“Don Diego,” answered Ruy Gomez, “the deed of which you have accused yourself is as much worse than anything your child has done as hatred is worse than love.  By the right of mere humanity I take upon myself to say that you shall be left here a while with your daughter, that you may take leave of one another.”  He turned to the officer.  “Withdraw your men, sir,” he said.  “Wait at the door.  You have my word for the security of your prisoner, and my authority for what you do.  I will call you when it is time.”

He spoke in a tone that admitted of no refusal, and he was obeyed.  The officers and the men filed out, and Ruy Gomez closed the door after them.  He himself recrossed the room and went out by the other way into the broad corridor.  He meant to wait there.  His orders had been carried out so quickly that Mendoza found himself alone with Dolores, almost as by a surprise.  In his desperate mood he resented what Ruy Gomez had done, as an interference in his family affairs, and he bent his bushy brows together as he stood facing Dolores, with folded arms.  Four hours had not passed since they had last spoken together alone in his own dwelling; there was a lifetime of tragedy between that moment and this.

Dolores had not spoken since he had pushed her away.  She stood beside a chair, resting one hand upon it, dead white, with the dark shadow of pain under her eyes, her lips almost colourless, but firm, and evenly closed.  There were lines of suffering in her young face that looked as if they never could be effaced.  It seemed to her that the worst conflict of all was raging in her heart as she watched her father’s face, waiting for the sound of his voice; and as for him, he would rather have gone back to the King’s presence to be tormented under the eyes of Antonio Perez than stand there, forced to see her and speak to her.  In his eyes, in the light of what he had been told, she was a ruined and shameless woman, who had deceived him day in, day out, for more than two years.  And to her, so far as she could understand, he was the condemned murderer of the man she had so innocently and truly loved.  But yet, she had a doubt, and for that possibility, she had cast her good name to the winds in the hope of saving his life.  At one moment, in a vision of dread, she saw his armed hand striking at her lover—­at the next she felt that he could never have struck the blow, and that there was an unsolved mystery behind it all.  Never were two innocent human beings so utterly deceived, each about the other.

“Father,” she said, at last, in a trembling tone, “can you not speak to me, if I can find heart to hear you?”

“What can we two say to each other?” he asked sternly.  “Why did you stop me?  I am ready to die for killing the man who ruined you.  I am glad.  Why should I say anything to you, and what words can you have for me?  I hope your end may come quickly, with such peace as you can find from your shame at the last.  That is what I wish for you, and it is a good wish, for you have made death on the scaffold look easy to me, so that I long for it.  Do you understand?”