She stood a few moments looking at the panels as if her sight could pierce them and reach him on the other side, and she tried to hold the last look she had seen in his eyes.  Hardly two minutes had elapsed before she heard voices and footsteps in the bedchamber.  Don John spoke in short sentences now and then to his servants, and his voice was commanding though it was kindly.  It seemed strange to be so near him in his life; she wondered whether she should some day always be near him, as she was now, and nearer; she blushed, all alone.  So many things had happened, and he and she had found so much to say that nothing had been said at all of what was to follow her flight to Villagarcia.  She was to leave for the Quixadas’ house before morning, but Quixada and his wife could not protect her against her father, if he found out where she was, unless she were married.  After that, neither Mendoza nor any one else, save the King himself, would presume to interfere with the liberty of Don John of Austria’s wife.  All Spain would rise to protect her—­she was sure of that.  But they had said nothing about a marriage and had wasted time over that unknown woman’s abominable letter.  Since she reasoned it out to herself, she saw that in all probability the ceremony would take place as soon as Don John reached Villagarcia.  He was powerful enough to demand the necessary permission of the Archbishop, and he would bring it with him; but no priest, even in the absence of a written order, would refuse to marry him if he desired it.  Between the real power he possessed and the vast popularity he enjoyed, he could command almost anything.

She heard his voice distinctly just then, though she was not listening for it.  He was telling a servant to bring white shoes.  The fact struck her because she had never seen him wear any that were not black or yellow.  She smiled and wished that she might bring him his white shoes and hang his order of the Golden Fleece round his neck, and breathe on the polished hilt of his sword and rub it with soft leather.  She had seen Eudaldo furbish her father’s weapons in that way since she had been a child.

It had all come so suddenly in the end.  Shading her eyes from the candles with her hand, she rested one elbow on the table, and tried to think of what should naturally have happened, of what must have happened if the unknown voice among the courtiers had not laughed and roused her father’s anger and brought all the rest.  Don John would have come to the door, and Eudaldo would have let him in—­because no one could refuse him anything and he was the King’s brother.  He would have spent half an hour with her in the little drawing-room, and it would have been a constrained meeting, with Inez near, though she would presently have left them alone.  Then, by this time, she would have gone down with the Duchess Alvarez and the other maids of honour, and by and by she would have followed the Queen when she entered the throne room with the King and Don John; and she might not have exchanged another word with the latter for a whole day, or two days.  But now it seemed almost certain that she was to be his wife within the coming week.  He was in the next room.