“Gone—­where?” Mendoza was fast losing the thread of it all—­in his confusion of ideas he grasped the clue of his chief sorrow, which was far beyond any thought for himself.  “But if you are innocent—­pray God you may be, as you say—­how is it possible—­oh, no!  I cannot believe it—­I cannot!  No woman could do that—­no innocent girl could stand out before a multitude of men and women, and say what you said—­”

“I hoped to save your life.  I had the strength.  I did it.”

Her clear grey eyes looked into his, and his doubt began to break away before the truth.

“Make me believe it!” he cried, his voice breaking.  “Oh, God!  Make me believe it before I die!”

“It is true,” she cried, in a low, strong voice that carried belief to his breast in spite of such reasoning as still had some power over him.  “It is true, and you shall believe it; and if you will not, the man you have killed, the man I loved and trusted, the dead man who knows the whole truth as I know it, will come back from the dead to prove it true—­for I swear it upon his soul in heaven, and upon yours and mine that will not be long on earth—­as I will swear it in the hour of your death and mine, since we must die!”

He could not take his eyes from hers that held him, and suddenly in the pure depths he seemed to see her soul facing him without fear, and he knew that what she said was true, and his tortured heart leapt up at the good certainty.

“I believe you, my child,” he said at last, and then his grey lids half closed over his eyes and he bent down to her, and put his arm round her.

But she shuddered at the touch of his right hand, and though she knew that he was a condemned man, and that she might never see him again, she could not bear to receive his parting kiss upon her forehead.

“Oh, father, why did you kill him?” she asked, turning her head away and moving to escape from his hold.

But Mendoza did not answer.  His arm dropped by his side, and his face grew white and stony.  She was asking him to give up the King’s secret, to keep which he was giving his life.  He felt that it would be treason to tell even her.  And besides, she would not keep the secret—­what woman could, what daughter would?  It must go out of the world with him, if it was to be safe.  He glanced at her and saw her face ravaged by an hour’s grief.  Yet she would not mourn Don John the less if she knew whose hand had done the deed.  It could make but a little difference to her, though to himself that difference would be great, if she knew that he died innocent.