“Who lives in the rooms beyond you?” she asked quickly.

“No one—­the last is the one where you are to be.”  He seemed surprised.

They had reached the open door, and he stood aside to let her go in.

“And on this side?” she asked, speaking with a painful effort.

“My drawing-room and dining-room,” he answered.

She paused and drew breath before she spoke again, and she pressed one hand to her side under her cloak.

“Who was the lady who came from here when all the men were gone?” she asked, very pale.

* * * * *

CHAPTER V

Don John was a man not easily taken off his guard, but he started perceptibly at Dolores’ question.  He did not change colour, however, nor did his eyes waver; he looked fixedly into her face.

“No lady has been here,” he answered quietly.

Dolores doubted the evidence of her own senses.  Her belief in the man she loved was so great that his words seemed at first to have destroyed and swept away what must have been a bad dream, or a horrible illusion, and her face was quiet and happy again as she passed him and went in through the open entrance.  She found herself in a vestibule from which doors opened to the right and left.  He turned in the latter direction, leading the way into the room.

It was his bedchamber.  Built in the Moorish manner, the vaulting began at the height of a man’s head, springing upward in bold and graceful curves to a great height.  The room was square and very large, and the wall below the vault was hung with very beautiful tapestries representing the battle of Pavia, the surrender of Francis the First, and a sort of apotheosis of the Emperor Charles, the father of Don John.  There were two tall windows, which were quite covered by curtains of a dark brocade, in which the coats of Spain and the Empire were woven in colours at regular intervals; and opposite them, with the head to the wall, stood a vast curtained bedstead with carved posts twice a man’s height.  The vaulting had been cut on that side, in order that the foot of the bed might stand back against the wall.  The canopy had coats of arms at the four corners, and the curtains were of dark green corded silk, heavily embroidered with gold thread in the beautiful scrolls and arabesques of the period of the Renascence.  A carved table, dark and polished, stood half way between the foot of the bedstead and the space between the windows, where a magnificent kneeling-stool with red velvet cushions was placed under a large crucifix.  Half a dozen big chairs were ranged against the long walls on each side of the room, and two commodious folding chairs with cushions of embossed leather were beside the table.  Opposite the door by which Dolores had entered, another communicated with the room beyond.  Both were carved and ornamented with scroll work of gilt bronze, but were without curtains.