On the threshold he paused and looked at her.  How bright were the large blue eyes which now gazed at Barbara with an expression far more searching than joyous.

Yet even while, with one hand resting on the back of the chair and the other pressed upon her panting bosom, she was striving to find the right words, Don John’s glance brightened.

She was not mistaken.  He had dreaded this meeting, and now with joyful surprise was asking himself whether this could be the woman who had been described to him as a showy, extremely whimsical, perverse person, who used her son’s renown to obtain access to aristocratic houses and as many pleasures as possible.

She must at any rate have been remarkably beautiful, and how wonderfully her delicately chiselled features had retained a charm which is usually peculiar to youth! how well the now dull gold of her thick tresses harmonized with the faint flush on the almost unwrinkled face! and how dignified was the bearing of her figure, still slender, in spite of her matronly increase in flesh!

No wonder that she had once fired the heart of his distinguished father!  Now—­that sunny glance could not deceive Barbara—­now her appearance had ceased to be unpleasant to him; nay, perhaps even pleased him.  And now she could bear it no longer; from the inmost depths of her heart rose the cry:  “John, my child!  My dear, dear son!”

Again, with the speed of lightning, the question darted through Don John’s mind:  “Is this the woman whose voice, I was told, offended the ear?  Spiteful, base slander!” How fervent, how gentle, how full of tender affection her cry had sounded!  Not even from the lips of Doha Magdalena, his much-loved “Tia,” had his own name ever echoed so musically as from those of yonder woman, whom he had just shrunk from meeting as though it were an inevitable misfortune.

Shame, regret, love, seethed hotly within him.  It was long since he had felt emotion like that which mastered him when her tearful eyes again met his, and now, in the enthusiastic soul of this favourite of fortune, whose lofty flight neither glory, nor fame, nor disappointment could paralyze, in the bosom of this good, high-minded young human being stirred the consciousness that a great new happiness was in store for him, and from his lips rang the cry for which Barbara had waited so long with vain yearning, “Mother!” and again “Mother!”

It seemed to her as if the bright sun had suddenly burst in its full, dazzling radiance from midnight darkness.  Three swift steps took her to Don John and, no longer able to control herself, she seized one of the hands which he had extended to her to kiss it; but his chivalrous nature forbade him to permit this, and at the same moment he had obeyed the impulse to kiss the face upturned to his with such loving tenderness.

On the way she had pondered long over the question how she should address him; but now she knew that she need not call him “Your Excellency,” far less “Your Highness.”  To impose so severe a constraint upon her poor, poor heart was no longer required and, though interrupted by low sobbing, she again cried with all the fervour of the most tender maternal love:  “My son!  My dear, dear child!”