of the young prince’s loyalty.  It was simple, unaffected, and without exaggeration.  He never drew his sword and kissed the blade, and swore by the Blessed Virgin to give his last drop of blood for his sovereign and his country.  He never made solemn vows to accomplish ends that looked impossible.  But when the charge sounded, he pressed his steel cap a little lower upon his brow, and settled himself in the saddle without any words and rode at death like the devil incarnate; and then men followed him, and the impossible was done, and that was all.  Or he could wait and watch, and manoeuvre for weeks, until he had his foe in his hand, with a patience that would have failed his officers and his men, had they not seen him always ready and cheerful, and fully sure that although he might fail twenty times to drive the foe into the pen, he should most certainly succeed in the end,—­as he always did.

Philip paced the chamber in deep and angry thought.  If at that moment any one had offered to rid him of his brother, the reward would have been ready, and worth a murderer’s taking.  But the King had long cherished the scheme of marrying Don John to Queen Mary of Scotland,—­whose marriage with Bothwell could easily be annulled—­in order that his presumptuous ambition might be satisfied, and at the same time that he might make of his new kingdom a powerful ally of Spain against Elizabeth of England.  It was for this reason that he had long determined to prevent his brother’s marriage with Maria Dolores de Mendoza.  Perez and Dona Ana de la Cerda, on the other hand, feared that if Don John were allowed to marry the girl he so devotedly loved, he would forget everything for her, give up campaigning, and settle to the insignificance of a thoroughly happy man.  For they knew the world well from their own point of view.  Happiness is often like sadness, for it paralyzes those to whose lot it falls; but pain and danger rouse man’s strength of mind and body.

Yet though the King and his treacherous favourite had diametrically opposite intentions, a similar thought had crossed the minds of both, even before Don John had ridden up to the palace gate late on that afternoon, from his last camping ground outside the city walls.  Both had reasoned that whoever was to influence a man so straightforward and fearless must have in his power and keeping the person for whom Don John would make the greatest sacrifice of his life; and that person, as both knew, was Dolores herself.  Yet when Antonio Perez entered Philip’s study, neither had guessed the other’s thought.

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CHAPTER VIII