she had soft dark hair, a sad and gentle face, with eyes that were quite closed, and a delicate mouth that had a little half painful, half pathetic way of twitching when anything hurt her,—­for she was easily hurt.  Very pale always, she turned her face more upwards than do people who have sight, and being of good average woman’s height and very slender and finely made, this gave her carriage an air of dignity that seemed almost pride when she was offended or wounded.  But the first hurt had been deep and lasting, and she could never quite believe that she was not offensive to the eyes of those who saw her, still less that she was sometimes almost beautiful in a shadowy, spiritual way.  The blind, of all their sufferings, often feel most keenly the impossibility of knowing whether the truth is told them about their own looks; and he who will try and realize what it is to have been always sightless will understand that this is not vanity, but rather a sort of diffidence towards which all people should be very kind.  Of all necessities of this world, of all blessings, of all guides to truth, God made light first.  There are many sharp pains, many terrible sufferings and sorrows in life that come and wrench body and soul, and pass at last either into alleviation or recovery, or into the rest of death; but of those that abide a lifetime and do not take life itself, the worst is hopeless darkness.  We call ignorance ‘blindness,’ and rage ‘blindness,’ and we say a man is ‘blind’ with grief.

Inez sat opposite her sister, at the other end of the table, listening.  She knew what Dolores was doing, how during long months her sister had written a letter, from time to time, in little fragments, to give to the man she loved, to slip into his hand at the first brief meeting or to drop at his feet in her glove, or even, perhaps, to pass to him by the blind girl’s quick fingers.  For Inez helped the lovers always, and Don John was very gentle with her, talking with her when he could, and even leading her sometimes when she was in a room she did not know.  Dolores knew that she could only hope to exchange a word with him when he came back, and that the terrace was bleak and wet now, and the roses withered, and that her father feared for her, and might do some desperate thing if he found her lover talking with her where no one could see or hear.  For old Mendoza knew the world and the court, and he foresaw that sooner or later some royal marriage would be made for Don John of Austria, and that even if Dolores were married to him, some tortuous means would be found to annul her marriage, whereby a great shame would darken his house.  Moreover, he was the King’s man, devoted to Philip body and soul, as his sovereign, ready to give his life ten times for his sovereign’s word, and thinking it treason to doubt a royal thought or motive.  He was a rigid old man, a Spaniard of Spain’s great days, fearless, proud, intolerant, making Spain’s honour his idol, capable of gentleness