Now the Spaniard, who had never been her friend, also came to urge the Emperor’s will upon her.  Toward him she need not force herself to maintain the reserve which she had exercised in her conversation with the confessor.

On the contrary!

He should hear, with the utmost plainness, what she thought of the Emperor’s instructions.  If he, his confidant, then showed him that there was one person at least who did not bow before his pitiless power, and that hatred steeled her courage to defy him, one of the most ardent wishes of her indignant, deeply wounded heart would be fulfilled.  The only thing which she still feared was that her aching throat might prevent her from freely pouring forth what so passionately agitated her soul.

She now confronted the inflexible nobleman, not a feature in whose clear-cut, nobly moulded, soldierly face revealed what moved him.

When, in a businesslike tone, he announced his sovereign’s will, she interrupted him with the remark that she knew all this, and had determined to oppose her own resolve to his Majesty’s wishes.

Don Luis calmly allowed her to finish, and then asked:  “So you refuse to take the veil?  Yet I think, under existing circumstances, nothing could become you better.”

“Life in a convent,” she answered firmly, “is distasteful to me, and I will never submit to it.  Besides, you were hardly commissioned to discuss what does or does not become me.”

“By no means,” replied the Spaniard calmly; “yet you can attribute the remark to my wish to serve you.  During the remainder of our conference I will silence it, and can therefore be brief.”

“So much the better,” was the curt response.  “Well, then, so you insist that you will neither keep the secret which you have the honour of sharing with his Majesty, nor——­”

“Stay!” she eagerly interrupted.  “The Emperor Charles took care to make the bond which united me to him cruelly hateful, and therefore I am not at all anxious to inform the world how close it once was.”

Here Don Luis bit his lips, and a frown contracted his brow.  Yet he controlled himself, and asked with barely perceptible excitement, “Then I may inform his Majesty that you would be disposed to keep this secret?”

“Yes,” she answered curtly.

“But, so far as the convent is concerned, you persist in your refusal?”

“Even a noble and kind man would never induce me to take the veil.”

Now Quijada lost his composure, and with increasing indignation exclaimed:  “Of all the men on earth there is probably not one who cares as little for the opinion of an arrogant woman wounded in her vanity.  He stands so far above your judgment that it is insulting him to undertake his defence.  In short, you will not go to the convent?”

“No, and again no!” she protested bitterly.  “Besides, your promise ought to bind you to still greater brevity.  But it seems to please your noble nature to insult a defenceless, ill-treated woman.  True, perhaps it is done on behalf of the mighty man who stands so far above me.”