“That would be wise,” answered Ruy Gomez.  “As for any help I have given you, it has been little enough and freely given.  I will not keep your father waiting for his liberty.  Good-night, Dona Dolores.”

* * * * *

CHAPTER XIX

All that had happened from the time when Don John had fallen in his room to the moment when Dolores left her sister on the terrace had occupied little more than half an hour, during which the King had descended to the hall, Mendoza had claimed the guilt of Don John’s murder, and the two had gone out under the protection of the guards.  As soon as Dolores was out of hearing, Inez rose and crept along the terrace to Don John’s door.  In the confusion that had ensued upon the announcement of his death no one had thought of going to him; every one took it for granted that some one else had done what was necessary, and that his apartments were filled with physicians and servants.  It was not the first time in history that a royal personage had thus been left alone an hour, either dead or dying, because no one was immediately responsible, and such things have happened since.

Inez stole along the terrace and found the outer door open, as the dwarf had left it when he had carried Dolores out in his arms.  She remembered that the voices she had heard earlier had come from rooms on the left of the door, and she felt her way to the entrance of the bedchamber, and then went in without hesitation.  Bending very low, so that her hands touched the floor from time to time, she crept along, feeling for the body she expected to find.  Suddenly she started and stood upright in an instant.  She had heard a deep sigh in the room, not far off.

She listened intently, but even her ears could detect no sound after that.  She was a little frightened, not with any supernatural fear, for the blind, who live in the dark for ever, are generally singularly exempt from such terrors, but because she had thought herself alone with the dead man, and did not wish to be discovered.

“Who is here?” she asked quickly, but there was no answer out of the dead stillness.

She stood quite still a few seconds and then crept forward again, bending down and feeling before her along the floor.  A moment later her hand touched velvet, and she knew that she had found what she sought.  With a low moan she fell upon her knees and felt for the cold hand that lay stretched out upon the marble pavement beyond the thick carpet.  Her hand followed the arm, reached the shoulder and then the face.  Her fingers fluttered lightly upon the features, while her own heart almost stood still She felt no horror of death, though she had never been near a dead person before; and those who were fond of her had allowed her to feel their features with her gentle hands, and she knew beauty through her touch, by its shape.  Though her heart was breaking, she had felt that once,