“How far, you will yet learn to your harm,” replied Don Luis, once more master of himself.  “As for the child, you still seem determined to withhold it from the man who will recognise it as his solely on this condition?”

Barbara thought it time to drop the restraint maintained with so much difficulty, and half with the intention of letting Charles’s favourite hear the anguish that oppressed her heart, half carried away by the resentment which filled her soul, she permitted it to overflow and, in spite of the pain which it caused her to raise her voice, she ceased whispering, and cried:  “You ask to hear what I intend to do?  Nothing, save to keep what is mine!  Though I know how much you dislike me, Don Luis Quijada, I call upon you to witness whether I have a right to this child and to consideration from its father; for when you, his messenger of love, led me for the first time to the man who now tramples me so cruelly under his feet, you yourself heard him greet me as the sun which was again rising for him.  But that is forgotten!  If his will is not executed, mother and child may perish in darkness and misery.  Well, then, will against will!  He has the right to cease to love me and to thrust me from him, but it is mine to hate him from my inmost soul, and to make my child what I please.  Let him grow up as Heaven wills, and if he perishes in want and shame, if he is put in the pillory or dies on the scaffold, one mission at least will be left for me.  I will shriek out to the world how the royal betrayer provided for the welfare of his own blood!”

“Enough!” interrupted Don Luis in mingled wrath and horror.  “I will not and can not listen longer while gall and venom are poured upon the sacred head of the greatest of men.”

“Then leave me!” cried Barbara, scarcely able to use her voice.  “This room, at least, will be mine until I can no longer accept even shelter from the traitor who—­you used the words yourself—­instilled venom and bitter gall into my soul.”

Quijada, with a slight bend of the head, turned and left the room.

When the door closed behind him, Barbara, with panting breath and flashing eyes, threw herself into an arm-chair, content as if she had been relieved of a heavy burden, but the Emperor’s envoy mounted the horse on which he had come, and rode away.

He fared as the leech had done the day before.  Barbara’s infamous abuse still fired his blood, but he could not conceal from himself that this unfortunate woman had been wronged by his beloved and honoured master.  In truth, he had more than once heard the ardent professions of love with which Charles had greeted and dismissed her, and his chivalrous nature rebelled against the severity with which he made her suffer for the cruelty of Fate that had prematurely robbed her of what had been to him her dearest charm.