“Where is Dolores?” he cried, in utmost anxiety.  “Where have they taken her?  Did she get out by the window?”

“She is safe,” answered Inez, hardly knowing what she said, for he turned pale instantly and had barely heard her answer, when he reeled as he half sat and almost fell against her.

She held him as well as she could, but the position was strained and she was not very strong.  Half mad now, between fear lest he should die in her arms and the instinctive belief that he was to live, she wished with all her heart that some one would come and help her, or send for a physician.  He might die for lack of some simple aid she did not know how to give him.  But he had only been dizzy with the unconscious effort he had made, and presently he rested on his own hand again.

“Thank God Dolores is safe!” he said, in a weak voice.  “Can you help me to get to a chair, my dear child?  I must have been badly stunned.  I wonder how long I have been here.  I remember—­”

He paused and passed one hand over his eyes.  The first instinct of strong persons who have been unconscious is to think aloud, and to try and recall every detail of the accident that left them unconscious.

“I remember—­the King was here—­we talked and we quarrelled—­oh!”

The short exclamation ended his speech, as complete recollection returned, and he knew that the secret must be kept, for his brother’s sake.  He laid one head on the slight girl’s shoulder to steady himself, and with his other he helped himself to kneel on one knee.

“I am very dizzy,” he said.  “Try and help me to a chair, Inez.”

She rose swiftly, holding his hand, and then putting one arm round him under his own.  He struggled to his feet and leaned his weight upon her, and breathed hard.  The effort hurt him where the flesh was torn.

“I am wounded, too,” he said quietly, as he glanced at the blood on his vest.  “But it is nothing serious, I think.”

With the instinct of the soldier hurt in the chest, he brushed his lips with the small lace ruffle of his sleeve, and looked at it, expecting to see the bright red stains that might mean death.  There was nothing.

“It is only a scratch,” he said, with an accent of indifference.  “Help me to the chair, my dear.”

“Where?” she asked.  “I do not know the room.”

“One forgets that you are blind,” he answered, with a smile, and leaning heavily upon her, he led her by his weight, till he could touch the chair in which he had sat reading Dolores’ letter when the King had entered an hour earlier.

He sat down with a sigh of relief, and stretched first one leg and then the other, and leaned back with half-closed eyes.

“Where is Dolores?” he asked at last.  “Why did she go away?”

“The jester took her away, I think,” answered Inez.  “I found them together on the terrace.  She was trying to come back to you, but he prevented her.  They thought you were dead.”