She grew nervous.  It seemed to her that her companion was walking more slowly, as if not wishing to leave her any distance behind.  She quickened her own pace again, fearing that she had excited suspicion.  Then she heard the Princess stop suddenly, and she had no choice but to do the same.  Her heart began to beat painfully, as she saw her chance slipping from her.  She waited for Dona Ana to speak, wondering what was the matter.

“I have mistaken the way,” said the Princess, in a tone of annoyance.  “I do not know where I am.  We had better go back and turn down the main staircase, even if we meet some one.  You see, I never come to this part of the palace.”

“I think we are on the right corridor,” said Inez nervously.  “Let me go as far as the corner.  There is a light there, and I can tell you in a moment.”  In her anxiety to seem to see, she had forgotten for the moment to muffle her voice in her veil.

They went on rapidly, and the Dona Ana did what most people do when a companion offers to examine the way,—­she stood still a moment and hesitated, looking after the girl, and then followed her with the slow step with which a person walks who is certain of having to turn back.  Inez walked lightly to the corner, hardly touching the wall, turned by the corner, and was out of sight in a moment.  The Princess walked faster, for though she believed that Dolores trusted her, it seemed foolish to give the girl a chance.  She reached the corner, where there was a lamp,—­and she saw that the dim corridor was empty to the very end.

* * * * *

CHAPTER IX

The Princess was far from suspecting, even then, that she had been deceived about her companion’s identity as well as tricked at the last, when Inez escaped from her.  She would have laughed at the idea that any blind person could have moved as confidently as Inez, or could afterwards have run the length of the next corridor in what had seemed but an instant, for she did not know of the niche behind the pillar, and there were pilasters all along, built into the wall.  The construction of the high, springing vault that covered the whole throne room required them for its solidity, and only the one under the centre of the arch was built as a detached pillar, in order to give access to the gallery.  Seen from either end of the passage, it looked exactly like the rest, and few persons would have noticed that it differed from them, even in passing it.

Dona Ana stood looking in the direction she supposed the girl to have taken.  An angry flush rose in her cheek, she bit her lips till they almost bled, and at last she stamped once before she turned away, so that her little slipper sent a sharp echo along the corridor.  Pursuit was out of the question, of course, though she could run like a deer; some one might meet her at any turning, and in an hour the whole palace would know that she had been seen running