The folding doors of the adjoining room were open.  Surely John was there, and how gladly she would have rushed toward it!  But the confessor asked her to sit down, as the captain-general still had several orders to give.  Then he entered the other room.

Barbara, panting for breath, looked after him and, as she glanced through the open door, it seemed as though her heart stood still.

Yonder aristocratic gentleman, in the full prime of youthful beauty, must be her son.

The man from whom she had so long been parted looked like the apparition of the Count Egmont, at whom she had once gazed full of admiration, with the wish that her John might resemble him; only she thought her John, with his open brow and floating, waving golden locks, far handsomer than the unfortunate victor of St. Quentin and Gravelines.

How noble and yet how easy was the bearing of the dignitary, who was still less than thirty years old!

His figure was only slightly above middle height.  What gave it the air of such royal stateliness?

Certainly it was not merely his dress, which consisted wholly of velvet, silk, and satin, with the gold of the Fleece that hung below the lace ruff at his throat.  True, the colours of the costume were becoming.  Dark violet and golden yellow alternated in the slashed doublet and wide breeches.  His father had worn similar apparel when he confessed his love for her.

Should Barbara regard this as a good omen or an evil one?

He was not yet aware of her arrival for, completely absorbed in the subject of their conversation, he was talking with his private secretary Escovedo.

How animated his beautiful features became! how leonine he looked when he indignantly shook his head with its wealth of golden hair!

Oh, yes!  Women’s hearts must indeed fly to him, and Barbara now understood what she had heard of the beautiful Diana of Sorrento, and the no less beautiful Alaria Mendoza, and their love for him.

Thus she had imagined him.  Yet no!  His outer man, in its proud patrician beauty and winning charm, even surpassed her loftiest expectation.  One thing alone surprised her:  the seriousness of his youthful features and the lines upon his lofty brow.

Why did her favourite of fortune bear these traces of former anxieties?

Now the priest interrupted him.  Had he told her John of her entrance?

Yet that was scarcely possible, for his face revealed no trace of filial pleasure.  On the contrary.  He rallied his courage, as if he were about to step into a cold river, straightened himself, and pressed his right hand, clinched into a fist, upon his hip.  Perhaps—­the saints be praised!—­Father Dorante might have reminded him of something else, for he turned to Escovedo again and gave him an order.

Then he waved his hand, flung back his handsome head as King Philip was in the habit of doing, but in a far nobler, freer manner, hastily passed his hand through his wavy hair, as if to strengthen his courage, and then walked slowly, with haughty, almost arrogant dignity, to the door.