CONTENTS

CHAPTER I. the coming of the ships.

CHAPTER II. the pledging of a word.

CHAPTER III. morning in rocaverde.

CHAPTER IV. sealed lips.

CHAPTER V. arria de lucena.

CHAPTER VI. on the terrace.

CHAPTER VII. the ships sail again.

CHAPTER VIII. a strange ship comes in.

CHAPTER IX. the heart of an iris.

CHAPTER X. at the gate of dreams.

CHAPTER XI. misunderstanding.

CHAPTER XII. alenya of the sea.

CHAPTER XIII. steel on steel.

CHAPTER XIV. lost in the forest.

CHAPTER XV. by the pool.

CHAPTER XVI. the mettle of lucena.

CHAPTER XVII. rainbow-winged.

CHAPTER XVIII. the storm, and after.

CHAPTER XIX. juan misses the mark.

CHAPTER XX. the silver lotus.

CHAPTER XXI. the end of a traitor.

CHAPTER XXII. juan goes for aid.

CHAPTER XXIII. the kindly church does office.

CHAPTER XXIV. rosa paredes decides.

CHAPTER XXV. a lucena wakes to anger.

CHAPTER XXVI. lucena’s weakness.

CHAPTER XXVII. “i could not find you, floria.”

CHAPTER XXVIII. “new dawn.”

“Holà! The ships are coming in! Wake town of sleepy women, my lord is back! Holà!”

The fresh boyish voice rang like a shrill trumpet through the quiet street. The babies at play looked up wonderingly; the doors and windows of the low, massive stone houses filled suddenly with eager faces.

“Really, Juan? It is no jest?” called a girl, leaning out regardless of her floating hair.

“Really, Emilia!” mimicked the boy breathlessly. “But braid your locks before Diaz comes ashore, or he will think you have torn them with grief ever since he left.”

A burst of laughter from the listeners greeted the sally and drove the girl within.

“Wither are you running, Juanito?” demanded a stout woman, putting out her hand to stop him as he passed.

“To the castle, Señora Maria, to claim the gold piece Don Estevan offered the man who first saw the ships.” He eluded her grasp nimbly, and sped on. “Holà! The ships are in!”

A wave of excitement and pleasure ran with him––the tumult of an awakening town. The women hurried into holiday gowns; the rosy children were swept within and hastily washed and tidied. In fifteen minutes the village had begun to empty itself into the streets that led to the wharf. Rocaverde was an island scarcely twenty-five miles long, and less than that in width, but when it turned out to greet its lord and his returning men the din was worthy a metropolis.

The boy ran on to the graystone castle that stood behind and above the town. The soldiers lounging before the gates turned to watch his approach, and waved ironical encouragement.

“I have a message for Don Estevan!” he cried. “Let me in!”

The guard laughed lazily, and a man descending the steps stopped, staring at the dusty, sunburnt herald.

“A message for Don Estevan?” he repeated. “From whom?”

“My lord is come; the ships are in the bay, señor,” stammered Juan. “Don Estevan promised a ducat to the one who saw them first; pray let me pass.”

The man paled and hesitated.

“I will tell him,” he said.

“But the ducat––” objected Juan.

The other impatiently drew forth the coin and flung it to him. “There. Go; leave me in peace.”

The boy pounced on it swiftly, and looked after the retreating figure.

“I wonder why it is worth a golden ducat to Pedro Mirando to tell Don Estevan the ships are home?” he remarked reflectively.

“Don Estevan will give it back to him,” suggested a soldier, with faint interest.

Juan made a gesture of denial.

“Not that way. But––” He threw back his head and sent the call ringing out again as he turned toward the village.

“Holà! The ships are in!”

The man called Mirando climbed the steps, setting his foot carefully on each stair, as if the semitropical sun had made him giddy. He went slowly back to the room he had left a few moments before.

“Don Estevan,” he said, pausing at the threshold.

The apartment into which he looked was a glowing study of varying tints of blue, ranging from the pale-sapphire glass that filled the arching windows to the deep violet of velvet cushions and hangings and the subdued purple-black of Oriental rugs. In the azure light Estevan de Lucena hardly seemed his twenty-five years as he glanced up inquiringly, pushing the fair waving hair back from his forehead.

“The ships are coming in,” the other stated quietly.

Estevan sprang to his feet.

“The ships! At last!” he cried joyously. “Tell the others, Mirando; bid them make ready to come to the wharf. And send word to Doña Soledad; no, I will see her myself. Hurry! Don Luís must not find an empty shore.”

Mirando regarded him without moving.

“Gonsalvo, señor?” he asked.

The young noble raised his eyebrows.

“Gonsalvo was my friend once, Don Estevan. Give him one more chance; see him before my lord arrives.”

“It is too late,” protested Estevan.

“Señor, if you could tell my lord that Gonsalvo had confessed it would help much. My lord loves you--he who loves nothing else on earth; if you asked, he would be content to banish Gonsalvo from Rocaverde.”

Estevan met the man’s keen, hard eyes with some impatience.

“But he will not confess, Mirando. I have seen him often in the last month.”

“Not when my lord was at the gates, señor,” he urged. “You have seen my lord in his anger, as have we; can even Gonsalvo face that?”

“Very well,” yielded Estevan reluctantly. “Go do my errands, then. Make haste, Mirando; it will not do to have Don Luís wait.”

But in spite of the injunction, Estevan himself lingered after the other had gone, listening to the excitement which rose in the castle as it had done in the village. Very tenderly he glanced at the line of sea which was visible from the window as finally he turned to go.

Mirando, watching in the hall below, spoke to a white-haired officer when he heard the door close.

“We are to go on, Don Ruy; I think Don Estevan is paying a secret visit to the prisoner.”

Ruy de la Vega looked up quickly and caught a glimpse of the passing figure. He shrugged his shoulders, and went on without remark, but his lined face was rigid with disapproval.

When the party from the castle reached the wharf, half an hour later, the four great ships had come to anchor and were furling their wings like weary sea-birds as they floated in their own bay. One small boat had already started for shore. In it sat Don Luís de Lucena, noble of Castile, descendant of a Gothic king, absolute and unquestioned ruler of the island and all it contained.

A hush fell upon the crowd as they watched his approach, and his steel-gray eyes flashed across them with serene indifference.

Under the afternoon sun Rocaverde glowed like a huge cone-shaped emerald, rising in slopes of velvet forest to a high central peak, at whose foot nestled the white village. The Mediterranean gleamed cobalt-blue, touched here and there with curling foam, and breaking in a silver line along the beach.

The little group of brilliantly dressed officers stood on the end of the wharf, left clear by the respectful crowd. They had been laughing and chatting, but as the dripping oars poised for the stop, they, too, fell silent.

“Shall you tell him to-night of Gonsalvo, Don Estevan?” asked Miguel Faria, lowering his voice.

“To-night, surely, but not here,” replied Estevan.

“Do you think my lord can make Gonsalvo speak?” queried a young officer whose sword-hilt had been designed for a Sultan of Granada, but who bore a dozen dangerous scars under his effeminately gorgeous costume. “The animal is obstinate enough to resist.”

Estevan made no answer; his eyes were fixed on the dancing boat. The others exchanged glances and looked at the two cousins.

Lucena had risen, and waited for the landing with the ease and grace of one to whom the swaying floor was most familiar. He was five years older than Estevan, but looked much more; the very carriage of his head betrayed years of autocratic command. As the boat touched he stepped on the wharf, and faced the group for an instant before acknowledging the general salute, his glance traveling deliberately over them. But to Estevan he opened his arms.

“You have recovered?” he demanded, the imperious question made a caress by its tone.

“Quite; it was never serious,” replied Estevan. “I might have gone with you, señor.”

“I shall not go again without you,” replied Lucena curtly.

Estevan smiled, and moved aside as his cousin turned to the others.

But not all the faces that met Lucena were bright with pleasure at his return; Mirando studiously avoided his chief’s direct gaze, Don Ruy’s expression was anxious under its grimness, and the air was alive with uneasy curiosity. Lucena’s cold face remained impassive, but the curl of his lip was not pleasant to see as he ordered the return to the castle.

As they passed up the dock Estevan caught sight of Juan, and smiling, tossed him a yellow coin.

“Ah, señor, if Señor Mirando has already given me the ducat!” the boy protested shrilly.

Estevan nodded, his dark-blue eyes sparkling with gaiety.

“Thank Señor Mirando, then, Juanito. I pay my own debts.”

Two hundred years before this Don Luís of the fourteenth century, another Luís de Lucena had loved and married a girl of the north--a gray-eyed, golden-haired daughter of vikings. From her the long line of Lucenas that followed drew their tall stature, their lawless joy of battle, their yielding to the lure of the sea.

Yet the pride of the Spanish noble so modified this, so forbade the viking outlawry, that never a Lucena forfeited the respect and fear of his own race. The court of Castile was open to them and theirs. But the wealthy Moors of Africa, the cultured Arabs of Andalusia, the Oriental merchants, all united in calling the Lucenas pirates; and from their point of view the name bore a shadow of truth. Rocaverde was weighted with Moorish gold; the babies played with jeweled trinkets wrought for dark sultanas; Lucena’s common sailors wore the silks of Granada, the wonderful arabesqued armor of Toledo, and boots of perfumed Cordovan leather.

Lucena’s castle, gray and somber without, was within a riot of this Oriental luxury, a reminiscence of Zahara or the Alhambra. There was always a faint suggestion of incongruity between his stately figure, with its self-contained bearing, and the Eastern atmosphere surrounding him.

Perhaps a realization of this prompted Estevan’s first remark when they found themselves together that evening.

“Do you know, señor, that the breath of the ocean follows you in here?” he asked playfully, his eyes on the other’s broad shoulders.

Lucena turned from the window and contemplated him. They were alone in Lucena’s rooms, and Estevan half sat, half reclined on a divan piled with furs that certainly had not come from Spanish hills or plains. His fair head rested against a tawny panther-skin, and the animal’s jeweled green eyes glared over his shoulder.

“You have something to tell me,” said Lucena irrelevantly. “The castle is agape with mystery and expectation. What is it?”

“We are like naughty children when the master returns,” Estevan smiled. No one else ever jested with Lucena. “I have something to tell you, señor--about Gonsalvo.”

He sat up, pushing away the cushions and scented skins.

“I did not notice him on the wharf,” commented Lucena.

“No; he is in prison.”

“Because?”

“It is a strange story,” Estevan responded slowly. “Soon after you had left, I noticed a change––a creeping restraint or distrust––a new unrest in the castle. Men talking together would fall silent when any one approached, or glance furtively at each other in passing. I was puzzled, señor.”

Lucena waited, his brows contracted.

“One night Miguel Faria went out late and alone. You know his love of gay colors; for some reason, he chose to wear black that night. At the foot of the great stairs Gonsalvo joined him and began to speak of things so amazing that Miguel stood aghast. In the dark, Gonsalvo had mistaken him for some one else, and before he discovered the error, Miguel learned that a plot was being formed to overthrow your authority, perhaps even to kill you.”

He hesitated an instant, regarding the calm face opposite.

“Miguel came to me, and Gonsalvo was at once arrested. But he will not speak, and we have no names. We do not know who are our friends, nor who our enemies; each man looks askance at his companions and is uneasy for himself. The situation is impossible. I have even offered Gonsalvo his life––in your name, of course––if he would confess. But I believe he fears the vengeance of his comrades as much as he does you, señor.”

“We shall see,” replied Lucena dryly.

Estevan leaned forward with eager interest.

“You believe he will speak, señor!”

The other looked at him.

“Men do not refuse to answer me. We will learn of the Inquisition, Estevan.”

Estevan paled, his fair face grave and distressed.

“You will do that, señor? Pardon; I can kill an enemy in battle or in the passion of a duel, but torture I could not.”

“I can,” answered Lucena deliberately, his lips curving in a cruel smile.

His cousin shuddered. Lucena came over a took a chair opposite; after a moment he pushed a small disk of translucent cubes across the table.

“Have you outgrown your taste for sweetmeats while I was away?” he asked lightly. “The cook who made these lumps of delight was captured in sight of Velez Malaga. I give him to you.”

Estevan roused himself with a little effort and laughed.

“The ladies will thank you, señor. My sister has come home; did you see her with Doña Soledad?”

“I saw my mother alone,” returned Luís. “To-morrow you must present me to the cousin I have never seen.”

“The convent has made her most dignified,” Estevan said mischievously. “I think I am a little afraid of her myself.”

Doña Soledad told me she was very lovely,” answered Lucena, his smile this time most different from the last. “Estevan, I am going to send you away for to-night. Tell Gomez to come to me.”

Estevan rose obediently.

I wonder,” he murmured, “how long I could have borne Rocaverde without you, señor, with the sea calling me night and day. I believe we could not live, we of the blood of the north, if we were kept quietly at home.”

“If you do not like it ashore you must be less recklessly daring abroad,” replied Lucena. “Only because you were wounded did I leave you. And even the sea-charm failed without you.”

Their eyes met. Lucena’s softened to a tenderness half fierce in its intensity; the warmth of Estevan’s still sparkled with the mirth of a moment past.

It was near midnight as the young noble went down the stairs, and Captain Gomez was not easy to find. When at least he was discovered and sent to his chief Estevan lingered in the great hall, gazing absently at the new spoils which littered the place with dashes of brilliant color.

“You are awake late, Don Estevan,” said a voice behind him.

He turned and met the saturnine face of Pedro Mirando.

“I was with Don Luís,” he explained. “You also are wakeful.”

“Does my lord hope to make Gonsalvo confess?” the man asked, letting the remark pass unheeded. “I suppose you spoke of him, señor?”

Estevan nodded gravely.

“Naturally. And Don Luís intends he shall confess, if only under torture.”

“I expected it,” murmured Mirando. “Don Estevan, I have something of serious importance to tell you at once. Will you come to my room for half an hour?”

“Why not?” Estevan assented readily, although with some surprise.

Mirando bowed, and they turned together.

The castle was very quiet, and they met no one in the brief transit. Once it seemed to Estevan that a shadow slipped down the corridor before them, but when they reached the corner no one was visible. The late moon had risen, a crescent of sullen red that cast flickering patches of light through the windows they passed.

Mirando led the way to a wing of the building––one of those massive buttresses which looked so small from the sea below yet were in reality so large. As the other opened the door Estevan glanced around, interested in a part of the castle where he had seldom been.

“Will you come in, señor?” said Mirando, his deference curiously eager.

Estevan entered the dark room and heard the door close behind him. Some one moved; the next moment a light flashed up, showing a face not Mirando’s bending over the lamp.

With an exclamation, Estevan turned and saw four men in the room––four of Lucena’s trusted officers, their faces drawn and anxious as they watched him. Mirando stood against the door, breathing quickly, like a man who has just accomplished some difficult feat.

In the moment of silence the sentinel’s hourly call floated thin and clear from the tower above.

“Ave Maria purísima––Las doce, y todo es sereno!” (“Hail, Mary, purest of women!––Twelve o’clock, and all’s well!”)

As the cry died away Estevan spoke, his smooth voice stingingly sarcastic.

“Gentlemen, I salute you. But if you desired this interview why not have come to my rooms, where you have all so often shared my hospitality? Really, if we did not know each other so well this might even suggest a trap––pardon the ugly word.”

“Don Estevan, it is your privilege to say what you will to-night,” answered Mirando slowly. “And the term is not out of place.”

There was a chair near by, and Estevan sat down, pushing back his fair hair with his characteristic gesture.

“Since we are to be frank, as becomes old friends,” he said, with winning grace, “I suppose I am facing the gentlemen so earnestly sought––Gonsalvo’s associates. Indeed, I quite appreciate your uncomfortable situation––Don Luís is so impetuous––but I fail to see what you hope from me.”

“You could set Gonsalvo free,” Mirando suggested.

“I could,” acquiesced Estevan. “Unfortunately, I am eccentric, dear señor, and a threat always causes me to act in the opposite manner from that requested.”

“You are playing, señor, and we are in desperate earnest.”

“Pardon, I am perfectly serious,” he corrected lightly.

Mirando made a movement of impatience.

“Don Estevan, to-morrow my lord will obtain Gonsalvo’s confession; the man is a coward, and will break down at the threat of torture. You have guessed that he will implicate us, and we are not alone in this. We must–– must, señor––place Gonsalvo out of my lord’s reach,––”

Estevan looked around the circle, his smile half scorn.

“I am unarmed, gentlemen. Your time is well chosen. But let me point out that there is no surer way to provoke Don Luís to searching investigation than by killing me. It would be wiser to kill Gonsalvo. I will not help you.”

“Gonsalvo is beyond our power,” answered Mirando. “You have not understood; your life is not the one we menace.”

“Whose, then?” demanded Estevan.

“My lord’s,” was the low reply.

“Impossible!” exclaimed Estevan, startled into a glance at the locked door.

“It is so, Don Estevan. Either Gonsalvo escapes to-night or my lord dies before the trial to-morrow.”

“Do you hold the life of Don Luís in your hand, that you talk so lightly?” questioned Estevan, with a contempt not wholly sincere.

“Yes,” declared Mirando bluntly.

The two men looked at each other.

“We have been mad,” Mirando went on after a moment. “We had plots of which we are forever cured. If Gonsalvo does not betray us my lord will in the future have no quieter subjects than we who have stood so near rebellion. But we will not die, señor. We have brought you here to offer you this choice: either set Gonsalvo free and give your word never to betray what has passed in this meeting or remain here by force until my lord is dead and the castle in our hands.”

The mockery left Estevan’s face, and a strange likeness to his cousin crept into his changing expression.

“Words, Mirando! Threats you cannot carry out!” he retorted. “Have you thought what your proposition would mean to me? Will you seriously assure me that you expect me to take your place and face Don Luís without an explanation of my action? Let us speak of something reasonable, gentlemen.”

“Certainly it is not to your advantage,” the other returned, stung by his tone. “You appeared to love my lord, and we offer you an opportunity to save him; if you refuse, he will die before you leave this room.”

Estevan rose, his glance flashing from man to man.

“You are in earnest gentlemen?” he asked incredulously.

The assent was a murmur rather than spoken words, but the eyes that met his were steadily resolved.

“You are asking me to give you my honor and life; how can you convince me that after I do this you will not attack Don Luís again? That the life I buy for him will be safe?”

“We will take any oath you choose,” Mirando said eagerly. “We ask no more than to resume our old peace, our old loyalty to my lord. And for your danger, señor, what you tell your cousin he will believe.”

“I will not lie to him,” flashed Estevan haughtily.

He made no reply, and there was a pause. The lamp flickered, crackling as the wick slipped into the oil, and one of the men arose to tend it, returning softly to his seat.

“Give me some proof that you can execute your plan,” Estevan said at last.

Mirando moved nearer the light, scrupulously set a chair for his prisoner, and produced a small packet of papers. As they bent over them he began to speak, cautiously and rapidly, his voice inaudible across the narrow room. But occasionally the whisper rose in emphasis, and the others nodded understanding as they caught such words as: “Desperate cause––every ship but one––Africa––Papal indulgence.”

Estevan understood that Don Luís could be murdered, and that the murderers could escape, with impunity. When Mirando ended Estevan’s head sank on his folded arms.

The men leaned forward, watching, intent; the place was very still. A little shiver ran through the group when at length Estevan lifted his colorless face.

“Very well,” he said quietly.

“You consent?” Mirando cried.

“Yes.”

The shock of triumph was accompanied by something else––something that kept the victors from looking at one another.

“You will swear silence, señor?” Mirando asked, almost humbly.

“My oath is not more binding than my word, Señor Mirando. But I will swear what you please.”

The men laid a tiny ivory crucifix on the table. As the others gathered round the distant call broke the silence a second time.

“Ave Maria purisima!––La una, y todo es sereno!”

Rocaverde possessed the virtue of early rising. The first ray of sun that glittered across the rippling water could count on finding the dimpled children awake and their mothers’ smiling faces at doors or windows.

Indeed, it was difficult to sleep with the fresh morning breeze setting everything adance [sic] and the birds in a very ecstasy of greeting. And this morning there was the additional spur of having the men at home, those delightful masculine playthings whose value was enhanced by their frequent absence. The wives and sweethearts of the sailors even felt a slight contempt for their sisters whose men were mere stay-at-homes––fishermen or gardeners.

Emilia Pardo, leaning out from her casement, her dark eyes smiling and reminiscent, was the first victim of young Juan’s overflowing exuberance as he sauntered down the village street.

“Holà, Emilia!” he called vigorously. “Are you thinking of the kiss I saw Diaz take yesterday?”

The girl blushed, but stood her ground with the courage of happiness.

“Why should he not, chico, if we are to be married this fortnight?” she retorted.

Juan stopped and regarded her critically.

“Diaz has good judgment,” he approved. “Tell me, was it that he was saying to you last night for three good hours? I saw you, señorita, although you saw but him.”

“I saw more than you, Juan Perez,” she parried hastily. “Know you that my lord has pardoned Gonsalvo, you who know everything?”

“How do you know?” he cried.

“Ah, Juanito, are you going to set the village laughing at Diaz and me?”

“No, no!” he coaxed eagerly. “Tell me, Emilia mia. I only teased you a little––just to see you blush like a pomegranate-blossom, Emilia-bella.”

“Well, then, I saw Señor Gonsalvo and two men whose faces were hidden go down to the wharf early this morning, and after a while the two men came back alone.”

“And you call that knowing my lord pardoned him?”

Emilia’s eyes opened wide.

“How else would he be free?” she demanded simply.

Juan stared at her blankly, then turned and darted toward the road to the castle.

The officer of the guard––the lisping cavalier who carried the Sultan of Granada’s sword––was crossing the court as the flying little figure dashed up.

“Don Bernardo!” the boy panted excitedly. “Pray you, wait.”

He turned languidly.

“You, Juanito? What now, child? Have you dreamed my lord has come in again, or are the Moors in the harbor?”

“No no, señor,” Juan denied. “I would ask if my lord has freed Gonsalvo.”

The young officer was surprised into a genuine laugh.

“You have slept in the moonlight, Juanito. My lord is more likely to try us all than to pardon Gonsalvo.”

“But he was in the village last night!”

“My lord?”

“No, señor; Gonsalvo. Emilia Pardo and Diaz were making love at her window by moonlight, and they saw him.”

Bernardo’s chin fell.

“You are dreaming,” he said bruskly [sic]. “But such dreams are not for me to play with; come to Captain Gomez.”

“And if Gonsalvo is gone what will you give me?” bargained Juan, climbing the steps with alacrity.

“If Gonsalvo is gone and any of us survive until to-morrow doubtless you can claim what you choose,” Bernardo said grimly.

Lucena also had risen early and watched the dawn from his balcony, leaning on a vine-draped rail. The morning on shore was an agreeable novelty after the long voyage––a morning bright with dewy flowers and noisy with the chatter of birds. The sounds of the awaking castle reached here only as a subdued murmur borne on air heavy with the fragrance of lemon-blossoms and almond-trees stirred by the light winds. Lucena’s cold face was gravely meditative in the delicate light; if he thought of Gonsalvo and the coming trial there was no sign of it in his tranquil expression.

After a while he moved slightly, and his eyes fell on another balcony, below and to the left of his own. A lady was seated there––a girl, from her slim grace of figure––gazing across the sloping hill at the ocean. Her back was turned toward Lucena, but something in the poise of her small head, in the clustering waves of fair hair, struck him with a thrill of recognition. Surely this must be Estevan’s sister, the cousin he had never seen.

He watched her with unconscious pleasure, careful not to move, for fear of frightening her away. He was perfectly aware of the respect and positive dread with which he was regarded––aware that the feeling was not unfounded. He gave what he received. No one had ever loved him, save Estevan; his father had died when he was still a child; and his mother was a conventional Spanish woman, who was irritated and dismayed by her viking son.

How still the girl was! He remembered that she was fresh from an inland convent, and looked at the scene with instinctive appreciation of what she must feel. Rosy mist trailed here and there over the turquoise floor of the sea, like the garments of fleeing Undines or Nereids; the sun mounted, fiery bright, into the delicate blue of the sky, which steadily deepened in tint. He wished she would turn––

“My lord,” faltered a timid voice behind him.

Lucena swung around, his brows drawing together.

“I did not call you,” he said.

“Pardon, my lord; Don Bernardo and Captain Gomez beg to report something of urgency.”

Lucena made a gesture of impatience and reentered the room.

“Admit them,” he ordered briefly.

The two men who entered were both visibly nervous; Gomez, indeed, was pale under the bronze of many a voyage.

“Well, gentlemen?” questioned Lucena, surveying them.

Bernardo looked at his chief, noting inconsequentially that the sapphire clasp at his throat just matched the dark velvet of his costume, wondering hazily if it had been chosen with intention. He pondered this problem while he answered.

“My lord, Gonsalvo is gone.”

“What?” said Lucena in a tone that effectually recalled the young officer’s mind.

“My lord, I did not go on duty until an hour ago. He was gone then,” he explained hastily.

“Gone? Do men leave my prison at their pleasure? Gomez, this is your affair. Gonsalvo was in your charge; where is he?”

“My lord, he is gone,” Gomez replied hoarsely.

Lucena rose.

“If he is gone you take his place,” he said, his voice low and in perfect control. “Don Bernardo, give orders to have the island searched at once. Your prisoner is probably in the forests or on the other side of the mountain. Let every house be examined, and every corner of the castle; look also in the ships at anchor. Set the whole population to the hunt, and promise a reward. Go!”

“My lord,” ventured Bernardo, “Juan Perez brings word that Gonsalvo was seen in the village last night, and this morning a fishing-boat is missing.”

Lucena’s white teeth pressed his lip.

“Very well; in addition to what I have said, bid the ships make sail and search the sea. Don Estevan will command them.”

The name sent a curious shiver through the two men. Bernardo retreated toward the door, hesitating and regarding his companion as Lucena spoke again.

“Gomez, there is no way Gonsalvo could leave his cell without your keys. Either account to me for his escape or consider yourself under arrest.”

“My lord,” the man faltered reluctantly, “Don Estevan took the keys last night.”

There was an astounded pause.

“What do you mean?” demanded Lucena.

“My lord, near two o’clock last night, Don Estevan came to my alcove opposite Gonsalvo’s cell. He believed me asleep, I think, and took the keys. He brought them back after a while; the room was half dark, and I was too puzzled to speak or question. I thought you had sent him, my lord, until this morning; then I knew he had stolen them––”

Lucena’s hand struck the word from his lips.

“You lie!” he gasped, in such a passion of wrath as they had never conceived even in him. “Open the door, Don Bernardo. You shall repeat this tale to Estevan, Gomez, before I have you hanged.”

His grasp closed on the stupefied man’s shoulder, and as Bernardo mechanically obeyed, he half led, half dragged his prisoner into the corridor.

The great hall of the castle was always gay and animated when the ships were in, but this morning a new excitement pervaded it. The men gathered in little groups, talking in subdued tones and exhausting themselves with comment and conjecture.

The litter from the half-unloaded ships, which yesterday had been so attractive, was now scattered and pushed carelessly aside. Bright-hued tissues of silk and gold, carved ivory trinkets from Cathay, marvelous swords whose least value was in their jeweled hilts––all lay unheeded where they had been tossed or dropped.

Estevan, colorless, with heavy shadows beneath his eye, leaned against a column and idly caressed one of his beautiful hounds. Perhaps he found a certain dreary amusement in the eager conversation of the different men, in their wild speculations and explanations which did not explain. Mirando approached him unobtrusively during a moment when the general attention was occupied.

“The conviction is universal that the escape is Gomez’s work,” he observed smoothly. “Doubtless, Don Estevan, my lord will disregard any absurd accusations the man may make in his desperation.”

Estevan looked at him coldly and returned no answer, continuing to pass his hand over the dog’s silken head. Flushing, Mirando bowed ceremoniously and moved away.

“No fishing-boat would carry him to the Spanish coast, and to Africa he would not dare,” one of the nearest group was declaring, when suddenly the private door that opened on the dais was flung violently back.

All turned with one impulse and stood silent as Lucena appeared, still grasping his captive, and followed by the agitated Bernardo.

“Don Estevan,” exclaimed Lucena, the powerful restraint he forced on his voice leaving it nevertheless shaken with passion, “because I do not know what rumors this man may have set afloat, I bring him here to repeat his lie in public before I have him hanged, and not for your contradiction. Speak, you!” He cast Gomez from him with a force that sent the man reeling to the center of the platform.

Dazed, bewildered, realizing that his one hope of escape lay in the man he accused, Gomez followed the general gaze to the face he sought.

“Señor,” he cried, taking a step forward, “you know I speak the truth! Señor, tell my lord you took the keys from my table last night when you thought me asleep and brought them back half an hour later. Por Dios, señor; you know if it is you or I.”

The accent of truth was in the appeal, and it struck doubt through the crowd. Lucena waited in unquestioning confidence. Estevan came forward very quietly.

“Gomez is right, señor,” he said, his steady voice falling strangely on the excited room. The dog followed noiselessly and stood by his side.

“You took the keys?” exclaimed Lucena, with incredulous astonishment. “You, Estevan?”

“Yes.”

Lucena’s expression darkened ever so little even as the anger died away.

“There are no doors in the castle closed to you, but if would have saved misconstruction had you asked me for them, Estevan. What did you do with them?”

Estevan found no reply. Only Mirando, watching him, guessed that the room wavered before his eyes as he heard the tranquil and affectionate reproach of the question. Lucena regarded his cousin in surprise, then glanced around the circle and seized the thought in the intent faces.

“Do you mean that you freed Gonsalvo?” he asked abruptly. “Is that what you wish me to understand, Estevan?”

Gomez clenched his hands, his eager eyes on the young noble’s face. Estevan looked at him as he answered.

“Yes, señor.”

A sighing breath came from the crowd. Lucena passed his hand across his forehead, as if to clear away the tangle of perplexities.

“Why?” he demanded, wonder still holding him so completely as to leave no place for anger. “Why, my cousin?”

Mirando moved nearer the dais, so near that a step would have brought him behind his unconscious chief, while he held Estevan’s gaze with the significance of his own narrowed eyes. This question had been foreseen the night before, and Estevan had received the warning that he must provoke no search for other culprits by asserting his own innocent intentions. The two men looked at each other with perfect comprehension, and Lucena’s demand remained unanswered.

In the silence the veteran Ruy de la Vega advanced from the others, his dark face flushed and indignant.

“My lord,” he said impetuously, “there is not one of us who remained in Rocaverde who has not felt these weeks of suspicion and distrust––not one who could have moved to aid Gonsalvo without convicting himself. Let Don Estevan answer as we would have been forced to answer. For who has so much to gain by overturning your rule, my lord, as the one who would rule in your place”

Estevan flung back his head, his eyes blazing.

“It is false––” he began fiercely, then stopped as he encountered Mirando’s warning glance.

“Then, prove it so, señor; I ask no more,” retorted the other, snatching his sudden pause.

Lucena’s voice cut between.

“Ruy de la Vega, you have no place between my cousin and myself. Estevan, for your honor and mine, you must explain why you have done this.”

The hush in the room was profound. Two men had stealthily joined Mirando, one of them playing nervously with the hilt of a slim stiletto. Unconsciously, Estevan’s face grew worn before the watching eyes, and two scarlet spots rose in his cheeks. Lucena paled slowly, waiting, but when he spoke it was even gently.

“Estevan, I know how you shrank last night from the idea of Gonsalvo’s trial; if in the very madness of pity you set him free to save him from torture say so.”

It was a moment before Estevan answered.

“No, señor,” he said.

Lucena sought again to meet the eyes that had never avoided his until now, then took his place in the great chair that awaited him.

“If this is a trial,” he said calmly, “you may speak, de la Vega.”

The permission was unexpected, and the old officer hesitated.

“My lord, I bear no enmity to Don Estevan,” he declared. “But I have seen––and not I alone––the delight he found in governing Rocaverde in your absence. And when this rebellion was discovered we wondered at his lack of effort to make Gonsalvo speak. He has visited the prisoner in his cell frequently, and alone; we did not know why until to-day. My lord, forgive me, but who would risk so much to free Gonsalvo except one of those who feared his confession?”

A murmur of assent ran around the room. Lucena looked full at the witness, and in spite of his honest sincerity, de la Vega shrank slightly.

“Estevan, you have heard; have you no denial?” asked Lucena.

Long ere this the scene had faded for Estevan, into a background against which two faces stood out––his cousin’s and Mirando’s. Watching the last, he replied almost apathetically:

“I can say nothing, señor.”

Lucena rose abruptly and strode over to him.

“Nothing?” he repeated. “Look at me my cousin, and tell me you know nothing of this.”

For the first time that day their eyes met; then, giddy, sick, conscious that to face Lucena was to make silence impossible, Estevan sank to his knee and hid his face.

Lucena remained motionless, looking down at the bent fair head. Something was rising in him that later might sweep down all––an agony still too new to be realized, an anger that might kill––but now he only felt Estevan’s humiliation. Nothing personal could ever affect him like this disgrace of the one he loved––to see at his feet the head that had been level with his heart. He hated the crowd for witnessing it, hated Ruy de la Vega for putting the treason in words, hated Gomez for being innocent. For a moment he was possessed by the blind berserker rage––he longed to kill, kill. Then the Spanish noble’s dignity held him again, and with it came unreasoning faith.

To the onlookers, his expression had scarcely changed in the long moment before he spoke; perhaps no one but Estevan recognized the harshness of his tone less as a sign of anger than of suffering.

“Estevan de Lucena,” he said, “it may be that you have some explanation not to be given in public; if so, come to me alone. If not, go to your own house until I send for you. Don Bernardo, I believe I gave you some orders to be carried out at once; why are you here? Miguel, go prepare the ships to sail immediately. You, Gomez, have proved yourself unfit for your former duties; you will deliver the keys to Pedro Mirando and aid Don Bernardo’s search. Gentlemen, I have offered five thousand ducats for Gonsalvo’s capture, and the morning is advancing.”

In an instant the hall was in commotion. Mirando sprang to open the door as Lucena passed out, but Estevan made no move to follow. When he arose, it was to go the other way, through the arched gates and down the steps. The people fell back on either side, leaving his path clear and looking strangely at Lucena’s dog as it still walked beside him

To go back to a place where one face has been and is no longer, where each familiar object insists on the absence and adds its voiceless protest––that was the ordeal which awaited Lucena. The tumbled furs of the divan lay as Estevan had tossed them the night before; the little tray of sweetmeats still stood on the table.

During the first hours, he still cherished the hope that Estevan would come to him and explain. When that failed, and information came of his cousin’s departure without protest or defense, Lucena went out and flung himself fiercely into the hunt for Gonsalvo. During the hunt he learned much––from overheard phrases, from hesitating comment, and innocent actions distorted or misinterpreted. When he left he was unable to conceive the possibility of Estevan’s betrayal; he returned shaken and reluctantly convinced.

Those who saw his face when he came home stood aside, venturing no word. He shut himself in his rooms, and the castle waited apprehensively.

Meanwhile, the search was vigorously carried on, and the village hummed with gossip and excitement. With the fickleness of the peasant, the old love for Estevan veered to hasty scorn and condemnation. Only Juanito Perez fretted and chafed, too sullen even to tease Emilia when Diaz sat with his mandolin half the night on her door-step.

It was the third morning when Lucena came out, so early in the gray dawn that the castle still lay silent and unheeding. The corridors were deserted; in corners the heavy shadows lingered somberly. Lucena pushed open one of the shuttered windows and looked out, watching the stars fade into the brightening sky. The sullen light was no more chill and harsh than his gray eyes. By and by a sleepy bird called from a tree; a faint pink crept into the eastern sky.

“Don Luís,” said a clear voice behind him.

Lucena waited a moment before moving; something sent a thrill of expectation through nerves he had believed numbed. But when he turned only habitual self-control checked the exclamation on his lips.

A girl was facing him, tall and slim in her clinging velvet robes, and most strangely familiar. For Estevan’s violet eyes gazed from her still face; Estevan’s sun-bright hair rippled across her forehead; Estevan’s were the arched black brows and curling lashes. For an instant the contraction of Lucena’s heart prevented speech.

“Señor, I am Arria de Lucena.”

“Estevan’s sister,” he murmured slowly.

“You might have said ‘My cousin,’ señor.”

The answer was not a plea, but a rebuke. Lucena was startled, and not displeased.

“Pardon, my cousin,” he replied calmly, “you fancied a slight that was not intended. I spoke only my thought on seeing you.”

“You are generous, señor, to remind me that it is a reproach to be Estevan’s sister. Believe me, it is only from necessity that I am here.”

The recollection of a gay voice stirred in Lucena’s memory; what had Estevan said of this girl’s dignity? For a flashing second he remembered the laughing eyes which were so like the cold ones before him.

“If you do not feel it a reproach––” he began.

She interrupted him with a gesture.

“I feel it so deeply, señor, that I have shame to stand before you; and I hate you for being the cause of this disgrace.”

The vehement cry was so exactly an echo of what Lucena himself had experienced that he flushed dark-red and moved nearer her.

“If you from a convent feel that,” he exclaimed with equal passion, “what do you think I have felt–––who am no child, and loved him?”

“I, too, loved him,” she answered fearlessly.

Lucena smiled.

“You? You saw him twice a year, perhaps, under the abbess’s guard. I have lived with him day and night for fifteen years; slept with him, sharing my cloak; fought men and sea with him at my side; grown with him to manhood. And because he was wounded I left him here to rule while I went on my last voyage; I returned, to find this!”

The tide of his feelings caught her.

“Doña Soledad said you would kill him,” she exclaimed. “I know why, now.”

“If he had been here the last three days there have been moments when that might have happened. But––”

“You pitied him?”

“I knew what would come, and sent him beyond my reach.”

They looked at each other in the tinting light, the girl shaken out of wounded pride into comprehension of a deeper suffering, Lucena vaguely conscious that he had spoken as never before to any one except Estevan. And as the morning brightened he realized more and more how like him she was––an etherealized Estevan free from stain.

Arria was the first to speak, gathering up the dignity so carefully taught her.

“Señor, I cannot question what you do with my brother; it is your right to judge him, not mine. But it is my duty to share the exile he has brought on us, and to-day I go to his house. Doña Soledad bade me tell you of my intention. Señor!” She saluted him and drew back a step.

Lucena’s face hardened.

“I may not leave Estevan there,” he said harshly. You cannot go to him, Doña Arria.”

She paled at the implied menace, but raised her head proudly.

“Very well, señor; then, I will return to the convent.”

“It is not suitable that you return to the convent; as my cousin, your place is with your only feminine relative, my mother.”

“Your castle is no home for one of my blood, Don Luís.”

Their eyes met, and Arria’s fell. No man in Rocaverde, not Estevan, could dare Lucena’s cold anger.

“Your blood is my blood, Doña Arria; your brother is my cousin. You remain.”

“You have no right to keep me,” she protested.

“Perhaps not, but I have the power.”

Somewhere in the building a door closed sharply; the tramp of marching feet came from the paved courtyard; the castle stirred and woke. Arria swept a profound salute to the watching man and moved away with unhurried grace.

That day the ships came in again, each from its own course, without Gonsalvo. The last one to return was Lucena’s favorite Gaviota; she brought news of a fishing-boat found floating bottom upward off the Spanish coast. So ended the hope or fear of the truth being disclosed.

Rocaverde settled down to the old routine; the village turned to the newer interest of Emilia’s coming wedding and the presence of the jovial sailors. In the castle, the depression was deeper, but the general feeling was one of relief at a danger escaped. If Lucena’s rule was sterner than ever, it was still just and passionless.

Only once had any one ventured an allusion to Estevan before him. On the morning of his interview with Arria frail old Leone Valdi had come to him in the great hall.

“My lord,” he said, “I have been with Don Estevan for many years; permit me to go to him.”

Lucena’s expression had not been pleasant to see; he only answered curtly:

“If you go to him you cannot return.”

That hour Valdi went.

The greatest change from the usual customs came to the part of the household ruled by Doña Soledad. The wing of the castle called hers had always been set apart as different from the rest; even the adjoining garden was stiff and regular, with its rows of trim flowers. The Oriental atmosphere that pervaded Rocaverde stopped at her doors, giving place to Castilian severity and decorum.

The ladies of her attendance were for the most part somewhat advanced in age, having grown old with their mistress in the years since Don Jaime de Lucena brought her home.

Doña Soledad had never found her son congenial, and he had never paid more than the daily visit of ceremony to her rooms. Estevan’s gaiety and boyish good humor, a coaxing grace that made his audacity irresistible, had proved him a more welcome guest, and during his enforced three months ashore his visits had often brightened the monotonous days. But Lucena was not amusing; hence, it was with surprise, and with some annoyance, that she heard him announced one evening.

“Is anything the matter?” she demanded as he touched her fingers to his lips.

Lucena smiled in perfect comprehension, glancing around the severe room at the women, who bent over their needlework with demureness.

“I have come to meet my cousin,” he returned composedly.

“You must have done so already, since she tells me you have refused her permission to join her brother,” answered Doña Soledad, selecting a skein of colored thread.

“To talk with her then, if you prefer the phrase, señora.”

“Arria!” she called, raising her voice slightly. “Come here, my child.”

The young girl arose from the chair in the shadow and came forward. The old pain gripped Lucena’s heart as he looked at the resemblance that was at once pleasure and anguish. The very glance of inquiry and rebellion as she saluted him was Estevan’s. He remembered the day he had told him to remain at home––

“My cousin,” he said calmly, “I think the terrace is more attractive than this dark room. As the señora can see us from here, we shall break no conventions.”

Doña Soledad and Arria exchanged swift looks; both fancied Lucena’s errand to be not one of peace, and both desired to escape a scene before the waiting-women. Very slowly, the girl laid her hand in Lucena’s and allowed him to lead her out.

In spite of herself, the transition from the gloomy interior to the glow and perfume of a southern sunset drew a sigh of enjoyment from Arria.

“You like this garden?” commented Lucena. “Yet its walls shut out all that makes Rocaverde beautiful––the sea.”

The simple remark could not have been more different from what she had expected.

“Perhaps I do not like the sea,” she suggested willfully, yet surprised into graciousness.

“You are a Lucena.”

“Very true, and I do like the ocean. Pardon, we are going too far from Doña Soledad.”

He indicated a low bench beneath a flowering tree.

“I am taking you there, my cousin.”

He did not take the seat beside her, but remained leaning against the trunk of the tree, watching her face.

“You are angry because I brought you here; why?”

“Doña Soledad has reminded me that I have no right to be angry with you, señor; that I should rather be grateful because you are content with keeping me a prisoner.”

“Doña Soledad is more than generous to me,” he said ironically. “You long so much to return to the convent, my cousin?”

“No,” she retorted with the frankness of irritation.

“Then it is to your brother you would go. Doña Arria, that is one place in Rocaverde where all is desolation; the ground falls away in ugly cliffs and treacherous slopes, pine-trees take the place of olives and blossoming almonds, and the sea roars sullenly across the reefs. The old Quinta itself has not been occupied for years. Would your devotion make you happy there, my cousin?”

His tone brought the scarlet blood to her cheeks.

“It is duty would take me there, señor,” she declared coldly, “not devotion to Estevan. I make no pretense to what I do not feel; and what he has done is without excuse. He must have gone mad, I think.”

“Do you know what I hoped you would say the other morning?” he asked deliberately. “I thought you would claim he was innocent.”

Her large eyes opened wonderingly.

“He did not deny it, señor?”

“No.”

“Then––”

Lucena shrugged his shoulders and was silent. But Arria understood, for when she spoke again it was less hardly, though still with the coldness beside which Lucena’s manner seemed passionate.

“The good sisters taught us much of duty, and taught us to practise it; but of love we were left to guess. I am very ignorant of such love as you felt for Estevan, Don Luís; I did not know such things existed.” She hesitated an instant. “I have never cared very much for any one. Señor, it is not that I blame you for punishing him, but that I cannot forgive you for making our disgrace public.”

“And do you think I did so willingly?” demanded Lucena fiercely, his eyes flashing into gray fire. “Do you think that when I went to him in the hall I even imagined his guilt possible? You say rightly you cannot understand. I would rather he had succeeded and killed me before I knew.”

Arria shrank slightly, and her slender jeweled fingers closed on the almond-flower which she had idly gathered.

“Doña Soledad told me you had no emotions,” she murmured. “That only pride or anger ever ruffled the calm of your indifference.”

“She is quite correct; Estevan was my one weakness.”

“Was?”

“And is––so far.”

She regarded him without a trace of coquetry, her gaze clear and uncomprehending. Lucena, meeting it, was fascinated and grimly amused. They had made her so dignified that one forgot her real youth, and remembering, he marveled at his late communicativeness.

“It is time I returned to the castle, señor,” she suggested, breaking the pause.

“If you will, my cousin. When I enter my mother’s rooms I do not wonder that you prefer a convent.”

For the first time, he saw her smile.

“If you could visit the convent you would find these rooms delightful.”

“Then, you are not unhappy here?”

She colored faintly, conscious of her self-betrayal.

“If it were not for Estevan––” she began, and left the sentence unfinished.

For a moment the fancy caught and held Lucena. If Estevan had not done this thing, and they three had been together in tranquil friendliness, the brother’s warm gaiety interpreting the sister’s chill reserve––what then? They walked back in silence.

Doña Soledad scrutinized them sharply as they entered. Arria went to her former seat, bringing with her into the dusky room some of the sunset’s rose and gold. Lucena took leave of his mother with the courteous composure of his arrival.

“You came here to wreak your temper on Arria,” she observed, her tone too low for the rest to overhear. “You will fail; she has her brother’s face, but your own insensibility.”

“I shall come to-morrow,” he stated, with cool irrelevance.

“You have been a long journey, Juan Perez; there is dust even on that curly black head of yours, and I see mountain thorns caught in your jacket.”

“That does not concern you, Señora Diaz,” the boy answered sullenly.

Emilia laughed teasingly, standing with coquettish pride on her own new door-sill.

“Not even if I can guess where you have been, Juanito?”

“You cannot.”

“But we are cross today! Padre Jacinto is coming; shall I tell him you have been over the mountain, over to––”

“Calla!” he exclaimed angrily. “Always a woman is talking, talking. Madre de Dios. I can tell you something, too; my lord is going to sea again, so good-by to Diaz for a while, señora.”

“Oh!” she cried.

“It is so. You would not have known until to-morrow if you had left me in peace.”

“But my lord has not been home a month. You are saying it to frighten me. Ah, padre mio, listen only to Juan, who says my lord goes to sea.”

Padre Jacinto stopped, surveying them benevolently.

“Is it so? Well, Emilia, you are a sailor’s wife, and a good girl who will not forget to burn her candle before Our Lady of the Sea.”

“If it were true, yes, padre. But Juan says so to vex me, because I guessed he had crossed the mountain to see the one who is there.”

The old man started uncomfortably, his pleasant face clouding.

“You should not accuse Juan of what would bring him my lord’s displeasure,” he said severely. “And if Juan has told you a falsehood he has done very wrong. Come with me, my son.”

“Padre mio, I told her the truth,” the boy protested, yielding reluctantly to the hand on his shoulder.

“I am glad to hear it, Juanito. Still, even the truth need not be unkindly spoken.”

“She is too curious,” muttered the boy.

Padre Jacinto made no reply until they had reached his little house and entered the quaint garden, when he seated himself on a bench before the door and contemplated his captive.

“Did you indeed visit Don Estevan, my child?” he asked, sinking his voice.

“Yes, padre,” he admitted unwillingly.

“How is he?” the other inquired.

Juan looked up in surprise; the question was not exactly what he had anticipated.

“He is paler and thinner, but very quiet and kind. I––”

Padre Jacinto patted the small sunburnt fist that hung within reach.

“You were attached to him, my poor Juan?”

“Padre, he was so good to me. He used to say to me, ‘Wait a little––a little, Juanito––and you shall come with me on the sea. We will capture a sultan at least.’ And his eyes laughed and danced, looking at me. It was I, padre, who ran to the castle that morning to tell of Gonsalvo’s escape, and I thought that perhaps if I had not told––”

“There––there, my son.”

“So, I crossed the mountain to-day and said it all to him––how I had not seen sun nor moon nor stars since that day of trouble. He put his arm around me––yes, as if he loved me––and explained that I had done no harm, that nothing could have made it different. He bade me not grieve or think of him sadly, for he paid his feudal service. Do you know what he meant, padre?”

“Perhaps,” said Padre Jacinto softly, and made the sign of the cross.

Juan looked at him doubtfully, puzzled, yet venturing no question.

Over in the little plaza opposite, the laughing groups had gathered for their regular afternoon diversion, the cachucha. Rosa Paredes, the girl who had succeeded Emilia the matron as village beauty, was lightly poised in the center of the ring, her round arms lifted high, glittering with gemmed bangles. In front of her a lithe young sailor waited eagerly, his dark face glowing in response to her sleepy glance, his foot beating time to the guitars and the rhythmic click of her castanets. Already the flower-like swaying steps had begun, when a joyous shout rang from the neighboring wharf.

“Holà, señores; news––news!”

All turned, and an outburst of laughter and applause hailed the interruption.

“News?” cried a dozen questioning voices. “News, señor capitán?”

The man saluted them from his post of vantage on a great pile of bales.

“News, señores; my lord sails to-morrow.”

“You hear, padre––you hear?” exclaimed Juan breathlessly.

There was a lusty shout from the men and a cry from the women. Rosa, still holding her exquisite pose, looked full into the eyes of her vis-à-vis and smiled.

The next instant there was a clatter of hoofs, and the crowd scattered respectfully as Lucena, attended by Don Bernardo and Pedro Mirando, rode back from his visit to the ships. A subdued pause held the village until he was beyond its boundaries; the same hush preceded him, to fall upon the castle at his approach.

More than once, during the last month, Lucena had felt this isolation with irritable weariness; perhaps it influenced the abruptness with which he presently announced his departure to Doña Soledad’s circle. But if he had expected to arouse surprise or especially interest he was disappointed. His mother acquiesced with absolute indifference, and Arria arose, as usual, to accompany him to the garden. Three weeks had made these sunset walks a matter of course, diminishing much of the latent hostility between the cousins.

“Your voyages are very long?” Arria asked rather listlessly when they were outside.

“Sometimes days, sometimes months,” replied Lucena with equal coolness. “This time, I think, it will be weeks at least.”

“You are going so far? Why?”

There was no one else who questioned Lucena’s plans or motives, no one else whom he would have answered.

“I am going out of these southern waters. I am tired of blue skies and perfumed winds, and of the unceasing sunlight. I am going past Gibraltar into the ocean, the ocean of sweeping green and gray and flying foam; I want the west mists and strong, sullen gales from which one wrests life, and so learns to prize it.”

The half-weary, level tone robbed the words of such enthusiasm as they might have held, yet left no doubt of their sincerity. Arria did not reply until they reached the seat under the almond-tree.

“I should think you would fear such an absence,” she said hesitatingly.

“Fear?”

“I mean some new trouble like the last.”

Lucena’s brows contracted with the old expression of pain or anger.

“You are afraid of your brother? Doña Arria, he fails in the wisdom of his race if he attempts that again. But he will not, cannot; my precautions are taken. And grant him the charity to believe he acted in madness or passion; I know he was not always so.”

She leaned back, looking up at him meditatively.

“I have thought of that, señor; that you have considered it makes my suggestion possible. Could it not be that Gonsalvo would have accused some one whom Estevan loved; you others care so much for one another, he might have tried to shield a friend. Might it not be?”

The twig under Lucena’s hand snapped, and he turned his gray eyes upon her with a blighting intensity of wrath that combined all the north and south struggling in his blood.

“Do you fancy I have not thought of that?” he demanded with suppressed vehemence. “Do you fancy it is comfort to me to think Estevan has sacrificed me to some dearer friend? If I believed that, I give you my word of honor he should not live until to-morrow!”

Arria’s eyes dilated, meeting his, and the reflection of his glance rose strangely in her fair serene face. For one moment they met beyond the borders; convent and castle alike slipped away and left two primitive creatures in recognition.

“I know!” she gasped. “I, also, should feel that. To find some one loved in your place––”

A gust of wind shook the tree and scattered the pink-and-white petals around them, one blossom catching in Arria’s golden hair. She shivered at the light touch and sank back, covering her eyes.

“God forgive me!” she murmured, terrified. “What wickedness have I said?”

Lucena himself was very pale. After an instant he bent and laid his firm hand on hers.

“The same blood runs in our veins; the same impulses leap to our thoughts; little as we understand each other, my cousin, there is no one else who can understand us half so well. When I come back we will try to learn each other better, for we are alone together.”

She made no answer, and presently they walked back to where Doña Soledad drew her thread placidly in and out, waiting for them.

Next morning the ships sailed.

The periodical excitement being over, Rocaverde lapsed into its usual cheerful repose. The plump, rosy children rolled lazily on the door-steps or made excursions to the gleaming beach of white sea-sand, Padre Jacinto scolded and praised his flock with alternate zeal, and the stay-at-home men resumed their normal importance.

Rosa Paredes accepted temporarily the devotion of several young villagers, and announced her intention of marrying only a sailor with exactly the same confidence as that with which she always assured the sailors she could only care for a landsman.

But a few weeks after Lucena’s departure the calm was again shaken into excitement. One morning the children came racing up from the shore with the cry that a strange ship was coming into the bay. Promptly the village was in an uproar, the bolder spirits hurrying to the wharf, while the women congregated at doors or windows and made voluble outcry at their rashness.

Half a dozen boys were despatched post-haste to the castle, Juan Perez refusing the errand with ungracious scorn.

The strange ship came to anchor with every indication of friendliness, and proceeded to lower a single boat with reassuring slowness and dignity. Don Ruy de la Vega and the party from the castle clattered through the village and dismounted at the wharf just in time to receive their visitors.

And Don Ruy echoed the amazed gasp of his officers as he saw the central figure of the group––a girl, dainty, demure, with dark lashes sweeping pomegranate cheeks, and the stamp of the Castilian court in the very fall of her lace mantilla and the arch of her tiny shoe.

When greetings and hasty explanations were over, and the combined parties moved up the wharf before admiring Rocaverde, Juan Perez first caught sight of the stranger.

Not being hampered by conventions, he followed the inclination which the young officers had politely overcome, and stared in open delight. The lady met his eyes, and her own sparkled into roguish response behind the meshes of lace.

For once, news traveled quickly to Doña Soledad’s wing of the castle. Don Ruy sent word to his mistress that guests had arrived from Castile and waited to see her. Perhaps even Doña Soledad possessed the pleasant weakness of curiosity, for there was no delay in admitting the visitors.

Arria was seated in a low chair at her aunt’s side when the little procession entered, and her violet eyes widened slightly at sight of the feminine figure.

“Señora,” said Don Ruy, “I have the honor to present to you the Señorita Doña Floria Mendez y del Carpio, and this gentleman, Señor Julio Venegas, her escort and captain of her ship.”

The girl dropped the clinging draperies as Doña Soledad rose to welcome her, and smiled with singular brightness. Beside her hostess and the stately Arria she seemed childishly small and radiant, and the wonderful dark eyes she lifted were at once soft and clear as stars.

“Señora,” she said, in a sweet, rippling voice, “that I invade your home without warning is indeed not my fault. My father was taking me to Sicily when he met the ships of Don Luís de Lucena, and as these gentlemen planned some expedition together, Don Luís suggested that you would give me your gracious care. If you undertake the charge, señora, I shall be more than grateful.”

The ceremony of the grace of the court blended charmingly with her natural frank sincerity. Won in spite of herself, Doña Soledad stooped and kissed the glowing cheek.

“I am pleased and honored by your father’s confidence, Doña Floria,” she replied with some warmth. “We knew each other years agone.”

Floria smiled again.

“Señora, so he said––and that he might forget all else; but that, never.”

The days when she knew Raimundo del Carpio were very agreeable recollections to Doña Soledad; she flushed the faint pink of gratified old age, and turned to introduce the two young girls.

The dull magnificence of the room and the primness of its inmates had not been without an effect even on Floria, and seeing Arria for the first time, she moved forward with impulsive delight.

“I thought I Was the only girl,” she exclaimed as Doña Soledad gave her attention to the captain. “I hope you will like me, indeed.”

“I like every one,” returned Arria a little coldly.

Floria raised her eyebrows.

“I do not, I am afraid. But when I do it is very much.”

She flashed her quick smile into Arria’s eyes, and turned to the departing men. Captain Venegas took leave of her with affectionate reluctance, and eve[n] Ruy de la Vega’s grim face relaxed as he watched.

Arria remained a silent spectator of the formalities of the reception, the selection of apartments, and the installation of the maid who attended the guest. But when Floria’s great dark eyes appealed to her, their expression suddenly wistful, she relented and stayed with her in the severe bedchamber when Doña Soledad withdrew.

“I may open these windows? Oh it was all green and gold and blue as we came to the castle; must it all stay outside?”

“This is your room,” Arria replied. “Let your maid do as you will. Doña Soledad does not like the strong light.”

Floria herself pushed back the heavy curtains, and came back to look at her companion.

“You like it, surely,” she exclaimed, with a quick breath. “How beautiful you are!”

Arria colored; the cry was a repetition of Estevan’s first words when she arrived at Rocaverde, and the convent had not accustomed her to compliments.

“You are, also,” she said, with a curious unwillingness to concede it.

“I? If I were ill-tempered I should be ugly; but you are all snow and gold. Sit down, please; let me learn this place with you here.”

Arria obeyed, vaguely conscious of the absurdity of connecting ill temper with the sweet, frank face, all latent firmness and courage. Floria took her place opposite in one of the stiff, high-backed chairs, moving restlessly in its uncompromising discomfort.

“When did you meet our ships?” inquired Arria after a moment.

“A week ago. Don Luís de Lucena had given battle to some Moorish pirates a few days before, and he was pursuing two that had slipped away in the night. My father wished to go with him, and you see how they disposed of me.” She laughed lightly.

“You saw Don Luís?”

“Yes; several times. He had been wounded; not seriously, but he carried his left arm in a sling. My father told him he had left his good fortune on shore with your brother.”

Arria winced and paled.

“What did Don Luís answer?” she demanded.

“Only that Don Estevan was unable to leave Rocaverde. I have not seen him yet, Arria. Is he like you?”

“He is on the other side of the island. But you will not be three days in Rocaverde without hearing that story.” Her lovely face hardened. “Did Don Luís please you?”

Floria looked at her wonderingly.

“I do not understand. Don Luís? I hardly know; he is so stern and imperious, I think I was afraid of him. Father told me he cared for no one in the world except Don Estevan, and it passed through my mind––you will not be angry?”

“No.”

“That no one but another man could ever return the love of one so chill and harsh.”

Arria rose abruptly, and kissed the other with her rare cordiality.

“Doña Soledad will want me,” she said. “Floria, do not speak of Estevan to any one but me. By and by you will understand.”

Floria wound her arms around the slim waist.

“I will do anything you wish if you will like me a little. I have a passion for being loved, and I think I have been petted all my life, Arria mia.”

Arria was right in believing that it would not be long before Floria heard Estevan’s story. That same night the maid repeated the tale while she unbound her mistress’s lengths of chestnut hair, adding to it all the exaggerations gathered from the other servants.

Floria, a Castilian reared to regard chivalrous honor as a very religion, listened with inexpressible horror and pity for his sister, tempered only by wonder at Lucena’s leniency.

“And he is a prisoner now?” she asked thoughtfully.

“Señorita, yes and no; he is at his home, the old Quinta Lucena, across the mountain. There is no one to watch him. The few servants who cared for the house when it was empty are still there, but my lord sent them no charge or command concerning Don Estevan.”

Floria questioned no further. After she had dismissed the woman for the night she went out on her diminutive balcony. Under the moonlight the garden lay in fairyland loveliness; the ripple of a fountain mingled with the distant lapping of the waves on the beach; the quiet air was freighted with perfume.

Floria rested her round arms on the rail, her dark eyes grave and pitiful. What was it like to be the sister of one so disgraced, to know that his very life hung on Lucena’s caprice? Had Arria pleaded for him, she wondered, and so won his cousin’s indulgence? Remembering Lucena’s glance, she felt the conviction that no one living could move him in his anger. He had loved this unfaithful kinsman, too.

“Ave Maria purisima!––Las diez; y todo es sereno!”

The cry was startlingly close, and on a tower the dark figure of the sentinel showed distinct against the silver light. On the other side of the garden wall some one laughed.”

“Verdad, Mirando, you shivered as though you felt the Atlantic wind in December,” called Don Bernardo’s lisping accents. “Did you never hear a sentry’s call, perhaps?”

“It came so oddly in the dark,” a stifled voice replied. “I detest their din at night.”

Floria turned slowly and went within.

The next morning Doña Soledad provided her guest and ward with a chair on the dais between herself and Arria. A piece of embroidery, appallingly large and intricate, was placed in the dismayed Floria’s hands as the day’s occupation.

At first her new pity and interest in Arria, and the reflection of the night before, made the dull quiet bearable, but at noon she rebelled.

“Arria, let us go into the garden,” she suggested, dropping the mass of bright silks in her lap.

The room contemplated her in mute astonishment.

“The sun is too hot, Doña Floria,” said Doña Soledad immovably.

She sighed, and clasped her small hands behind her head.

“Yes, señora. But I am tired indeed.”

“Presently we will lunch, and then we will take the siesta. You are not yet accustomed to our tropical climate.”

“No, señora. I saw a little church as we passed through the village yesterday, all white, with rose-vines climbing over it; does one go there?”

“Certainly not, Doña Floria. Padre Jacinto visits our chapel four times a week.”

Floria’s dark eyes sparkled as they rested on the opposite wall.

“Señora, that is a beautiful guitar.”

Doña Soledad followed her gaze indifferently.

“It has not been touched for years. Carmen, bring it to Doña Floria.”

The instrument had doubtless been wrested from oriental hands by some former Lucena; it was El Aud of Arabia, gleaming with the opalescent inlay of mother-of-pearl, its frets and pegs marked with the dull color of strange gems. Floria touched it caressingly, and put it in accord with gentle fingers.

“Play,” murmured Arria idly.

“It is the guitar of some Eastern princess, the guitar of Zaraya the Fair that Israfel had breathed upon,” answered Floria, the rich chords drifting through her words. “It will sing of courtyards in Fez where fountains splash all day long, of midnight in the Alhambra gardens; listen––it is sad as the nightingales of Zahara!”

There was no need to bid them listen; the women’s needles had stopped and even Doña Soledad was caught in the web of notes. Floria looked only at Arria, and the shadow and sympathy of the night before stole back with its moonlight, shutting out the watching room.

Something stirred deep in Arria’s violet eyes as she listened––something strange and half awake. Floria had heard the story; she realized that. But it was not Estevan’s face that rose with the music and set itself before her with new insistence.

When the young girl’s soft fingers slipped from the strings Doña Soledad cleared her throat.

“The flowering trees are too oppressive,” she remarked majestically. “My dear, I hope you will keep the guitar; and we shall always have pleasure in hearing you play.”

But not even Floria could play always, and by the end of the first week she developed a dozen ways of coaxing Doña Soledad’s attention from the inevitable embroidery. And perhaps that severe lady was not unwilling to watch the graceful courtly dances, or listen while the young girl sat chin in hand and related the wild tales learned from Moorish or Provençal ballad-singers.

It was when the hour of the siesta scattered the group that Floria one day drew Arria with her.

“I want to show you something,” she declared. “Or, rather, I want you to show me.”

She led the way past the usual boundaries, glancing back demurely. Arria paused with startled surprise.

“Out there?” she exclaimed. “We must not leave Doña Soledad’s wing of the castle, Floria.”

“Not far. Across this hall there is a wonderful room; I saw only a little of it the other day when Padre Jacinto left. Come!”

Arria yielded to the gentle pressure and they crossed the hall. Floria pushed open the door and they stood on the threshold.

The room was curiously still; the windows were open, and the noontide sun flooded the place, throwing a thousand varying tints of rich violet and azure from floor and walls and hangings, but the sense of desertion clung there. A book lay face downward on the table, a silken scarf swung from the arm of a low chair, yet both girls felt instinctively that they need not fear the return of an owner.

“It is Don Luís’s room, perhaps?” suggested Floria.

“No,” said Arria decisively. Without knowing why, she was assured that Lucena’s stamp was not here.

“No, he would not care for this sea of lapis-lazuli, this heart of an iris. But it is beautiful.”

Floria sat down and rested her head against the velvet cushions. “Arria, you are so dignified; one would think you had passed a year at the court, not I. Why there is another guitar!”

Arria glanced at the instrument leaning against the divan and back again to the smiling face.

“It is a man’s room,” continued Floria merrily, leaning to pick up the book. “See only those old Toledo swords, and that chart of some strange voyage! I would I were a cavalier, Arria mia; I should challenge the master of all this to a duel, and marry you, and never, never go back to Castile!”

She opened the book, and gave an exclamation.

“It is Italian! I know this very well, this Florentine romance. The pages are crushed. Who in the castle reads Italian, Arria? I think––I think I should like the owner of this room.”

But Arria made no reply; she had moved to the table, and was looking down at a gauntlet that had lain beside the book, her fair face almost repellant in its bitterness of contempt. Floria rose, but quicker than her movement was the one with which Arria put her hand over the crest stamped on the white kid.

“We should not be here,” she said imperiously. “Floria, come away.”

The rustle of the silver-fringed curtain checked the answer; they turned together to confront a man who stood in the doorway.

“Señor,” gasped Floria, scarlet with confusion. Your room––”

“No, señorita,” he denied hurriedly. “I––the room was Don Estevan’s.”

The Dante slipped from Floria’s grasp.

“Oh!” she cried.

Arria’s glance silenced her.

“Señor Mirando, have the goodness to open the door,” she directed calmly. “Come, Floria.”

Mirando held back the curtain without a word as they passed out.

“Señorita!”

Juan sat up abruptly, shaking off the rosy snow of fallen blossoms that the fresh breeze was scattering.

“Señorita!” came the call again, with even more coaxing gaiety.

He looked around, puzzled and doubting his ears, then up at the wall over his head. He gasped and stared in speechless admiration.

Floria regarded him contently across the tangle of vines, quite indifferent to the glaring sun that transmuted her hair to a halo of copper and bronze.

“Señora?” the boy stammered.

“You are the first person I have seen for two months who was not embroidering,” she declared. “You are the boy who stood on the wharf, yes? Talk to me, señorita.”

“Señora, I am Juan Perez.”

“Señor, I am Floria del Carpio,” she mimicked gravely. “That road over there leads to the village?”

“Yes, señorita,” he answered, breaking into a slow smile as he met her eyes.

“I should like to go there and visit the pretty women and play with the dimpled babies. I am smothering in there.” She waved an explanatory hand toward the castle. “Every one is asleep; I saw you from a window and came out.”

“The wall––”

“Oh, I am standing on a bench. I shall be obliged to tell Padre Jacinto that I have disobeyed Doña Soledad and deceptively pretended to take a nap; then I will ask him not to tell, and he will not. I have learned to know him very well in two months, perhaps?”

Juan laughed delightedly, and moved nearer.

“Yes, señorita. I, too, wheedle him when things get a little wrong. Don Bernardo also I can coax my way, and even––on occasion––Don Ruy. Now if it were my lord!” He shrugged his shoulders expressively. “I would not be under your wall, señorita, if he were at home.”

Floria’s face sobered slightly.

“Don Luís is so harsh?” she asked.

“Every one fears him.”

“I wish he would return,” she said mischievously. “I am not afraid of him, much. Does nothing exciting ever happen at Rocaverde?”

Juan paled under his warm tan.

“When the ships are in, yes,” he replied. “Señorita, I hope nothing happens this time.”

She recollected, and arched her delicate brows.

“You mean to Don Estevan.”

He nodded sullenly. Floria held out a finger-tip to a diminutive green-and-gold beetle who was feebly struggling on its back.

“If this were Castile,” she reflected aloud, “and Don Estevan de Lucena had betrayed his cousin and overlord––”

Juan raised his defiant gaze suddenly to her face.

“Did you ever see Don Estevan, señorita?”

“No.”

“In the village we call him El Sonriente, the Smiling One. His eyes were the sea in the morning sun, laughing and kind beyond the telling. There was no one who did not turn to him in their hour of trouble. Señorita, if you had seen him you would not want him to die.”

“Certainly I do not want that,” she protested. “But I think it is for Don Luís I am sorry, Juan.”

“For my lord?” he exclaimed incredulously. “You are sorry for my lord, señorita?”

Floria carefully pushed the beetle over the edge and watched him fly away, then folded her arms on the broad wall and looked down at the boy.

“‘The flash of steel is in his eyes, but it shines from the simitar a friend left in his heart,’” she quoted with quaint gravity. “Juanito, an Arab of Grenada who was hostage at our court once told me a legend of a great prince who visited the City Beyond, one night, in a dream. A wonderful city it was, of pearl and jasper and gold, but even as with us there were many poor and hideous houses.

“‘And which of these palaces is mine?’ asked the prince. The spirit who led him pointed to a half-built tower of dark stone, splashed here and there with crimson and moldered with clinging damp. ‘That!’ cried the astonished prince. ‘Who dared build for me this dungeon?’ ‘You yourself,’ answered the spirit. ‘Each word and act of yours lays one more stone in that construction.’

“‘Then what saint dwells in that palace of diamond, whose last turret is just rising in place?’

“‘That,’ said the spirit, is the lifework of your gardener, who died to-night.’ The prince was silent a while. ‘And if I try,’ he asked humbly, ‘can I build better, and tear down that evil place?’ The spirit covered its eyes with its wings. ‘Alas! poor mortal, you may build the rest of your tower of radiant light, but not Allah himself can change that which is already done.’ That dawn, when the prince awoke, his attendants recorded that he wept.” She paused, and the fascinated Juan regarded her with wide black eyes.

“You mean, señorita?” he questioned earnestly.

“I mean, Juanito, that Don Estevan has built as he would, but that Don Luís suffers for no fault of his own. Do not lay your first stones wrong, my Juan, through sympathy.”

The boy checked her movement to retreat with an eager cry.

“Ah, no, señorita, listen first. I cannot bear that you should believe I excuse Don Estevan. I would defend and fight for my lord, although I fear and do not love him. We are all loyal, we of Rocaverde. But one cannot stop caring for some one, just because they are not good.”

“That is true,” she assented warmly. “Juan––”

An exclamation of shocked amazement rose from the garden behind.

“Floria! What are you doing?”

She turned hastily, and was confronted by Arria’s dismayed face. A rustle and patter announced Juan’s retirement.

“Only you?” said Floria joyously. “Doing? I am coming down, unless you want to look over, too.”

“Look over?”

Floria stepped from the bench and surveyed her teasingly.

“Why not? Do you never tire of the right side of the wall, Arria?”

“You were talking with some one.”

“With a boy––only a little boy. What a mistress of the maids you would have been, Arria! If you knew where I was before I came to the garden what would you say?”

Arria met her glance with some misgiving.

“Where?” she demanded.

Floria sat down and veiled her eyes reminiscently behind their dark lashes.

“I went out into the real castle, and met Don Ruy de la Vega. He showed me so many things; it is another country out there, Arria. The lofty rooms with their arches and pillars of inlaid woods and stone, the glowing colors and soft luxurious lights; I loved it all. And he told me stories––stories that carry the breath of the sea and the sting of the salt wind. They are brave, brave, your Lucenas, and this last Don Luís also. I wished again that I were a cavalier. I could fight for a chief like that.”

“You are mad,” interrupted Arria, pale with anger. “You had no right to go there––no right.”

Floria looked up, startled and frightened.

“What do you mean, Arria––what have I said? Oh––” She broke off at the idea that her words might have seemed a reproach to Estevan.

“You knew that Doña Soledad would not permit that,” Arria went on, struggling for self-control. “You knew––”

A faint cry rang from the village below, swelling to a great cheer. For an instant the noonday hush quivered to the distant uproar, then a single clear bugle note sounded from the castle tower.

“What is it?” Floria questioned.

Arria released her hand from the other’s excited grasp, and drew back.

“The ships are in,” she said slowly.

“The ships!” cried Floria, springing to her feet. “Let us go back. Arria,” she flung her arms about her companion, “you will not be angry, when my father will take me away so soon?”

“No,” was the low answer. “I will not be angry, Floria, since you are going away so soon.”

“Because I am not sure that I shall be very happy. I never told you, Arria, but my father took me from Castile because one of the great nobles wished to marry me, and I could not bear it. He is very powerful with the king, that man, and he may force my father either to give me to him or put me in a convent. Sometimes I am afraid, afraid; it is then you say I laugh too much.”

Arria caught her breath, interested in spite of the quivering expectation that mounted through her as the clamor grew in the village and castle, proclaiming the master’s arrival.

“Why will you not marry this noble?” she asked. “He is so hateful to you?”

“No––yes; I do not know. But when I marry some one I want to care for him.” She regarded Arria with wide mystic eyes––eyes that betrayed how often she had lingered at the gate of dreams. “If the duke persists I must be shut in a convent for always––in the gray walls, out of the sun.”

“You love some one else?” Arria demanded bruskly.

“No––oh no!” The crimson rushed hotly to the sweet, earnest face. “It is not that; it is that all my life I have waited for something strange and wonderful, and I must wait still.”

If it had been two months earlier Floria’s confidence would have met only scornful incomprehension, but Arria was learning much.

“You would be wiser to marry the king’s favorite,” she replied, yet not without kindness in her tone, and she held out her hand to the other as they turned back.

Lucena did not visit Doña Soledad's apartments until his chosen hour of sunset. There was much to be done––orders to be given, reports to be heard; moreover, he spent hours alone in his room.

He did not ask of Estevan, and no one ventured to mention his name, especially as there was nothing to tell. During the long weeks there had been no sign that the old Quinta was not still deserted; no protest or complaint had come across the dividing mountain.

That Lucena had not forgotten was perhaps most evident in the cold aversion of his glance when it rested on Ruy de la Vega––an aversion which he did not permit to affect his confidence in the old officer, but which was none the less distinct. Gomez remained in the background as much as possible; he had still nightmares when he felt Lucena’s grasp on his shoulder. Even Don Bernardo was more comfortable when not in sight of his chief.

Lucena himself was paler than before, and the line between his level brows had deepened. The sailors of his ship could tell of a sullen recklessness passing even his usual daring in storm and battle; of long nights spent on wind-swept decks, when the cordage strained singing overhead and everything gleamed wet with rain and flying spray. Sometimes the white dawn would find him still leaning against the rail, and these vigils had left in his face the silence, the menace, and the loneliness of the ocean itself.

When he entered Doña Soledad’s room that evening a thrill of interest ran round the demure circle. Floria had already learned that her father’s ship was not with the others––she had received a letter from him through Lucena––and she watched the scene with contented relief.

Perhaps for the first time in her life, Arria had taken thought of her own beauty and imitated a little of Floria’s dainty coquetry of dress. The touches her pride would permit were very few; the narrow chain of sapphires that encircled her slim throat and echoed the tints of her eyes, the cluster of deep-blue flowers in her golden hair, no more. But consciousness of them aided the strange confusion that shook her.

Lucena greeted his mother with the usual lack of emotion on either side, then turned to Arria.

“Are you also rejoiced to see me, my cousin?” he asked, with a chilling irony of which he was scarcely aware, so purely was it of defense and not attack.

“I am glad you have returned safely, señor,” she answered in her slow, cool voice.

No ordeal could have been more bitter to Lucena than this home-coming, from the moment when he involuntarily sought Estevan’s face on the wharf to the hours spent in his lonely room; and now Arria’s calm indifference of tone fell on a spirit already quivering with impatient suffering.

“I thank you,” he said abruptly, and moved to Floria’s side––Floria, who smiled at him in a frank welcome that was yet touched with shyness.

“Shall you grieve very much to be Rocaverde’s prisoner for some months, Doña Floria?” he inquired.

“Every one is most kind to me, señor,” she replied a little wistfully. “There could be no place more pleasant to me while my father is absent.”

Lucena glanced round the shaded room and back to the glowing face which, without Arria’s regular loveliness, still seemed to gather and hold all the warmth and color of the place.”

“It is different from Castile,”

“Perhaps that is why I am happy, señor.”

The sternness of his expression lightened as he met her clear eyes.

“Doña Floria has many resources for amusement,” Doña Soledad observed. “She frequently is kind enough to entertain us with her guitar and with tales which, while chiefly concerning pagans, are very diverting.”

Lucena and Floria looked at each other and smiled together.

“Doña Floria, may I ask that you will let me be diverted some day?” he asked.

Not seldom had Floria played Scheherazade to a brilliant circle of King Juan’s ladies and courtiers; she answered now, readily and naturally:

“Señor, I shall be only glad if I can return one of the many happy hours I owe to you and Doña Soledad.”

“I and my house are yours,” he replied courteously. “Señoras,” his voice changed as he saluted the other two women, “permit me to bid you good night, with all gratitude for your ardent welcome.

He did not look at Arria as she regarded him with eyes that glittered behind their curtaining lashes, nor did he notice the movement with which she drew the knot of flowers from her hair and deliberately crushed them in her hand.

An exclamation from Floria first called attention to the purple that stained the slender white fingers and dripped on the dark velvet robe.

Lucena paused outside the door, with a sick distaste for any place whither he might go. He would sail again in a few days, he decided; Rocaverde was unendurable. Presently he crossed to a low divan at the opposite end of the hall and sat down, resting his arm on the sill of the open window and gazing over the garden with unseeing eyes.

“Benedicite, my son,” ventured a gentle voice.

Lucena turned.

“You, Padre Jacinto? You are away from the village later than usual; has Rocaverde sent you for my authority to enforce your own?”

“No, my son; Rocaverde is good, very good; not perfect, but what will you?”

Lucena surveyed him questioningly, and waited. Padre Jacinto looked at the floor, his kindly old face troubled and half doubtful.

“It is not the village,” he resumed. “It is of you, my son, that I would speak. We learn much that cannot be repeated, or even hinted; but you should not be in this solitary hall alone.”

“Another conspiracy, father?”

“No, no,” he denied. “Not a conspiracy; only––sometimes one secret enemy is more to be dreaded than many banded together. My son, you are very severe, and those who have wronged you dare not rest.”

Lucena made no exclamation, but his face became gray in its pallor.

“I understand you,” he said, his quiet tone unshaken. “And if Estevan tries again I hope he succeeds. Go, now, father; I thank you.”

“My son, my son!” exclaimed Padre Jacinto, seriously alarmed and dismayed. “I spoke no names. Indeed it was not Don Estevan I meant––”

Lucena silenced him with a gesture.

“Hush! Your confidence is safe, father. I understand; go––no one shall suffer for this.”

“But––” began Padre Jacinto desperately; then he yielded to Lucena’s glance and retreated in mute distress.

Lucena looked round the hall, with its dusky shadows and dim corners masked by draperies, then slowly turned his back to it and resumed his position at the window.

Long after darkness had fallen completely he still sat there motionless.

The rooms that had been Estevan’s possessed an entrance on one of the main halls as well as the unused door opening opposite Doña Soledad’s suite. Lucena’s brief command that these rooms be untouched and unentered had been given long before, and so strictly had it been obeyed that not even a window had been closed against the sun or rain.

It was, therefore, with profound amazement that he stopped in the large hall two or three days after his return and stared at the swaying curtain of the long-shut door. Not the least breeze stirred the noonday heat; moreover, there had been the faint grind of turning hinges. Who in Rocaverde dared challenge an order so given?

Lucena stood still for a moment. Slowly Padre Jacinto’s warning crept to the surface of his thoughts, and with this came recollection of the unused door near the seat where he had been alone. Was that what the padre had feared? He crossed swiftly and opened the door.

Some one drew back hastily to the shelter of a column, and in the stillness the stifled gasp of dismay was distinctly audible. It was characteristic of the autocracy to which the lords of Rocaverde were accustomed that Lucena made no movement in pursuit.

“Come here,” he said, scarcely raising his tone from its usual level.

The man obeyed, as undoubtedly Estevan would have obeyed if Lucena’s momentary fancy had been correct. There was an unpleasant pause.

“You will explain why you are here, Mirando.”

“My lord––” faltered the man, then broke off.

“I am waiting.”

“Pardon, my lord, I was in search of something.”

“Of what?”

Pedro Mirando had more than one reason for shrinking from the keen gray eyes. His answer was an inspiration of the moment, suggested by an object he had noticed in first entering.

“My lord, that.”

Lucena followed the pointing hand with a rapid glance.

“Give it to me!”

Mirando picked the snowy heap from the floor and presented it––a triangle of filmy lace that twined itself around Lucena’s fingers and exhaled a faint sweet scent.

“My lord, I saw Doña Floria drop it here, and when the maid told me her mistress had lost a favorite mantilla I remembered and came to seek it.”

“Doña Floria was in this room?”

“With Doña Arria, my lord. I saw them coming out, and held back the curtain.”

“And who constituted you Doña Floria’s attendant, or made that an excuse for disregarding my order?”

Mirando was quick to perceive and seize the explanation most likely to conceal his real object and present a lesser fault.

“My lord,” he stammered with an embarrassment not altogether feigned, for the gaze upon him was sufficiently disconcerting. “I meant no harm; it was so pleasant to oblige Doña Floria––”

Lucena raised his eyebrows with supercilious contempt, and paused an instant before replying. It was quite possible that Floria’s bright prettiness had captivated the man, and that he had risked this merely for a chance of seeing her again.

“I shall inquire of Doña Floria if it is as you say,” he said curtly. “Another time, pray refrain from thinking concerning an order of mine. You may go.”

Mirando retired more than willingly. Before following, Lucena looked reluctantly round the room, never more desolate than under the morning sun its owner had so loved. Faded blossoms had been wafted through the windows, and now dotted with dull brown the gleaming floor and dark rugs. A crystal vase holding some withered hyacinth stems stood on the table; noting this, Lucena’s eye fell on the glove that lay beside. He gave a faint exclamation and took a step forward, his face flashing, not into Arria’s cold scorn, but into passionate tenderness and warmth. He put out his hand impulsively, then let it fall again to his side. After a moment he turned and left the room.

That it was the hour for the siesta, or any other hour, was not a matter which Lucena was accustomed to consider when he wished to carry out an idea. He entered Doña Soledad’s apartments precisely as usual, only to find the large room deserted save for two of the most ancient waiting-women.

“Do not disturb Doña Soledad,” he directed the one who moved to the door. “I wish to see Doña Floria.”

The message was a trifle more imperious than the king would have sent, but Lucena was blind with the old pain. He stood looking out at the almond-tree where he had said farewell to Arria until a light footfall aroused him.

Floria swept her graceful salute, with a smile all sunshine.

“Señor, I am glad to find some one else in Rocaverde who does not sleep at noon,” she declared laughingly.

“I forgot that custom,” returned Lucena. “I find the nights so much too long that daytime sleep did not occur to me. I have disturbed you?”

“No, señor; on the contrary.”

She took her usual place, and he sat down opposite, curiously tired and willing to escape his own thoughts. The two waiting-women had discreetly returned to their work.

Floria waited a little, in a silence full of sympathy for the other’s mood, then took the guitar that leaned against her chair and lightly touched the strings.

Lucena shivered and looked up.

“Pardon Doña Floria; yes, you will fulfil your promise?”

“Shall I? Then I will play for you the song with which Alenya of the Sea used to charm the sadness from the spirit of the king.”

“Tell me, first, who was Alenya.”

“You do not know the story, señor? Very well, I will try to repeat it as an Arab hostage at our court once told it to me.

“Long ago, before the beauty of Cava brought the Moors across Gibraltar into Spain, there lived in the East a king named Selim the Sorrowful. His kingdom was vast, his people contented; all the country laughed except the ruler.

“Ever he grieved for a thing unknown, a want undefined and unsatisfied. Wise men and temples were questioned in vain; none could tell the king’s desire or cure it. And his dark, wistful face came to be accepted as a thing usual and royal.

“One day, when the king walked alone in his garden by the sea, a strange mist crept over land and water, silvery, opalescent, wonderful. He stood watching. Suddenly a gigantic wave arose and swept curling to his feet, where it broke with a great sound.

“When the glittering foam and spray fell away again a girl was standing on the shore, clad in the floating gray of the mist, girdled and crowned with soft, dim pearls. Her lustrous eyes were green as the heart of the ocean, as the king gazed into them his sorry shrank and fled.

“‘Who are you, desire of mine?’ asked Selim. ‘Alenya of the Sea,’ she answered him, and her voice was as the lap of the waves on a summer night. Then the king took her in his arms and bore her to his palace.”

“And she sang to him?”

“She sang to him, señor. Never was a change more marvelous; in all the kingdom there was no man so happy as Selim the king. Day and night, night and day, he lingered by the sea-maiden. Great prosperity came to the land, the fields yielded double crops, it seemed the king’s smile was a very sunshine of the South.

“But by and by a superstitious dread fell upon the people, and the jealous priests fostered it. Strange, strange and weirdly sweet was the music that drifted from Alenya’s apartments. There came a day when the country demanded that Selim put away the evil enchantress or die. One month they gave him for the choice.”

The notes idly touched at intervals slipped into a singular cadence.

“The men of the East are weak, Doña Floria. He banished the sea-maiden?”

“No, señor; he chose death, and a month with Alenya.”

“If he lived one month according to his will few lives can equal his.”

“That is true, señor. But never was such a month as this, when the lonely man still possessed his love and the wearied king had found an excitement. Selim stepped too near the bar that prevents perfect happiness on earth. When the end of the four weeks came––” She paused, leaning over the guitar, her red lips parted, one diminutive foot poised on the cushioned footstool.

“They died?”

“Señor, Alenya sang to the king for the last time. Ah, I cannot play you that lost music; it was so sad that if it were written the paper would dissolve in tears. When it ceased the king slept, and Alenya went back to the sea and the mist alone. Later came the people and awakened him with their rejoicing, but he had forgotten.”

“Forgotten!”

“Yes, señor, for Alenya’s last song had swept her from his mind. From his mind, not his heart; he was again Selim the Sorrowful, yearning for the thing he did not know.

“Often, often, he wandered along the shore, suffering, uncomprehending. But the night he died the attendants found the print of a small wet hand on the pillow where rested the king’s silver head.”

With the last words came the promised music, startling minor chords whose very richness was half discordant, strung on a fine thread of melody that seemed too frail to bind them.

Lucena listened, caught in one of those lulls which briefly visit the most stormy life, and are less peaceful than the cessation of pain.

When Floria ended he approached, almost with indifference, the subject that had brought him.

“Doña Floria, if Selim could have heard you he would have ceased to regret the sea-maiden. To say that I thank you is not enough, yet there is no more. Perhaps I may pay my debt another way; have you not recently lost an object you prized?”

“No, señor,” replied Floria, wondering.

“No? Not one of the dainty trifles you ladies cherish?”

She shook her head in puzzled denial.

“Ah, then Mirando told me a falsehood,” said Lucena, with perfect serenity. “He is very imprudent.”

But Floria caught the steel-cold flash that crossed his eyes, and realized promptly that she had innocently laid a heavy charge against some one.

“Señor, you are displeased!” she exclaimed frankly. “Will you not let me know what I have said? If I have forgotten, or do not understand, I might convict someone unawares.”

Lucena contemplated her an instant, then lowered his voice beyond the hearing of the women.

“Doña Floria, this morning I found Mirando in a room that should be closed. In excuse he alleged that he had gone there in search of a mantilla which your maid missed, and which he had seen you drop when you left the place with my cousin Arria. Is this true?”

“I did go once to the violet room, señor, not knowing it was––closed,” she answered. “I remember now that my lace was missing; very probably my maid mentioned it.”

“And Mirando opened the door for you and so saw it fall?”

Floria checked herself on the verge of saying that Mirando had entered in ignorance of their presence. She had learned enough during her two months at Rocaverde to feel a sincere pity for any one who incurred Lucena’s anger, and she saved Mirando out of feminine sympathy for the defenseless.

“He opened the door, señor; he could easily have seen it.”

Lucena’s brow relaxed.

“Once more I thank you, Doña Floria, and ask pardon for questioning you.”

He rose and took the lace from the table where he had laid it on arriving.

“It has gathered the dust of the disused place,” he added rather sadly. “Take it back to your brightness, señorita.”

But Floria shrank back in swift repugnance, and it slipped to the floor between them.

“No, señor,” she refused hurriedly. “I could not wear it now.”

Lucena looked at her in surprise, and as their eyes met he saw that here were full of tears.

After he had gone one of the women approached the young girl.

“Señorita, if you please, Berta and I will not speak of my lord’s visit,” she offered.

“Why?” inquired Floria simply.

The woman hesitated.

“Señorita, Doña Arria will be vexed.”

The ready laughter danced back to Floria’s face.

“Vexed? She herself has told me that no man in Rocaverde dared vex Don Luís, and should I risk it, a friendless stranger? It is no jest to say he frightens me.”

“Doña Arria is a Lucena,” murmured the woman sagely.

A week after his visit to Floria, Lucena sat reading in the great octagon of horseshoe arches that formed the upper hall. From the center, the broad stairs ran down into the hall below, which rang, as usual, with voices and laughter and the passing of many feet.

Above, it was comparatively quiet; the sunshine glinted across the myriad tints of the walls and hangings and flickered in a quivering stream of light around Lucena’s bent head. He did not notice the small figure that had approached until Floria’s voice aroused him.

“Señor!”

Lucena looked up and rose.

“You, Doña Floria? I am honored. Will you sit?”

Reassured by his matter-of-fact courtesy, she came nearer, smiling at him with brilliant, excited eyes.

“Señor, if Doña Soledad finds me here I shall be scolded. But you have not come again to our wing of the castle, and I feared you would sail without my seeing you.”

“If Doña Soledad discovers you I will find an excuse,” answered Lucena, returning her smile with a gentleness which few but Estevan had ever encountered. “Is there some way I can serve you, Doña Floria?”

“Yes, señor; send me away. Oh, not far, not from Rocaverde; only somewhere where I may have sunlight and the fresh wind. Doña Soledad has been kind, but I cannot bear the long days of embroidering when one may not leave one’s chair. I have tried; told them my stories, played the guitar, coaxed them to dance with me. Señor, for months to come––it is appalling!”

She was too generous to tell of Arria’s new animosity and Doña Soledad’s disapproving silence, which had made the last week unendurable. But it was not necessary; the appeal was peculiarly apt to touch the viking Lucena.

“Where can I send you?” he mused.

“Señor, I have talked to your governor, Don Ruy de la Vega. His sisters live near the top of the mountain––two old ladies. Could I go to them?”

“You would be contented there?”

“Yes; oh yes. May I, señor, without offending Doña Soledad?”

“You shall go,” he returned. “And I will tell Don Ruy that you are to be at liberty in your eery. For Doña Soledad my caprice shall be sufficient explanation. You are satisfied, Doña Floria?”

She held out both hands impulsively, her face radiant.

“Ah, señor!”

Lucena touched his lips to one of the small hands, and stood watching as she vanished between the curtains. He was thinking of other laughing eyes that had met his in a declaration of need for the free wind and the sweep of the sea. He sighed impatiently and turned, to see Arria leaning against the window on the other side of the hall.

She had followed Floria, of course, and had witnessed the little scene without comprehending. Never again could she claim her old indifference to those around her.

Lucena, looking, recognized a wrath equal to his own, a passion that burned like flame. In two strides he reached her side, and caught her in his arms.

“So, my cousin, you care!” he exclaimed exultantly. “You care!”

“Floria––” she gasped.

“You imagine I could find my mate in that dainty child? Look at me!”

She lifted her head and looked into his gray eyes, her own unflinching.

After a moment Lucena stooped and kissed her fiercely.

“You will send her away?” she demanded, unconscious that she was seconding Floria’s own plea.

“If you wish it.”

“Yes.”

“I had meant to sail to-night; now, I stay to claim my wife. You shall marry me to-morrow, Arria.”

Very slowly, she drew herself from his arms.

“To-morrow, if you choose, except for Estevan,” she answered.

Lucena’s face darkened.

“What has he to do with us?” he asked. “Can I not forget him even for an hour?”

“I’m his sister,” declared Arria firmly.

“And I his cousin. Our disgrace will be neither more nor less when you are my wife.”

His imperious tone brought her eyes to his in flashing challenge; already the similarity between them stirred the inevitable antagonism.

“You do not understand,” she said coolly. “Estevan’s judge cannot be my husband; I cannot marry you while he waits your pleasure.”

His brows contracted in an anger born of long endurance.

“If I did not kill him that first day, do you think I am likely to do so now?” was the harsh question.

“No. But I ask you to do more; send him away from Rocaverde, and let him find an unbranded life in the world outside. Set him free.”

“Never!” he said, his face setting like steel.

“It is my price,” she stated quietly.

Lucena smiled, not moving.

“If I want you I will take you, Arria.”

“You have the power. You do not want me if I am not willing.”

“You love me, my cousin.”

“I am not sure whether I love you or hate you,” she retorted. “But I will never be your wife unless you set Estevan free.”

“I will not”

“Why?”

He was silent, looking at her with an expression which few men would have cared to provoke.

“Why?” she repeated. “Because you want to punish him; because you have delight in keeping him a prisoner on this island where the least child would shrink from him?”

“There can scarcely be any other reason,” he replied coldly. “And he deserves it.”

Floria would have divined the truth from sympathy; to Arria the knowledge came in a swift moment of intuition.

“Is that it?” she asked keenly. “Or is it that you still care for him too much to let him go beyond your reach?”

“It is not for you to question me,” exclaimed Lucena, white with wrath. “Estevan is my prisoner, and will remain so. Either you become my wife to-morrow, or I sail. Choose!”

“You will sail, then.”

“Very well.”

They looked at each other, and with a quick movement he caught her in his arms again.

“If ever you tire of me, my cousin,” he said under his breath, “tell me, and I will offer you my dagger and my heart; but treachery I cannot bear again.”

“Luís!” she cried, for a moment as feminine as Floria could have been.

He kissed her, then put her from him, and left the hall.

Lucena sailed the next day according to his word, but not until he had seen Floria established in her new home. He was perfectly unaffected by Arria’s jealousy and Doña Soledad’s disapproval; Floria’s pretty gratitude was the only pleasant memory he carried to sea. Between Arria and Estevan he refused to choose; and as of old he turned to the ocean, whose cool, translucent arms were ever opened to him, her son.

From her mountain refuge Floria, her dark eyes soft and friendly, watched the stately ships glide out of the bay.

“I would like you to be very happy,” she said aloud. “Good-by, señor.”

There was no response save the hum of bees in the flowering vines that covered the low, square house. Smiling contentedly, she looked down the sloping mountain side to the dimpled azure of the Mediterranean far below. Presently she crossed the courtyard to the door.

“Señora Celia, how does one see the other side of the mountain?” she asked gaily. “This side I know––the smooth hills, the castle, and at the very foot the white village––but the other? Is it the same?”

The old lady surveyed her with dreamy satisfaction.

“No, my dear, it is very different. The mountain is full of cliffs and sudden falls, and there is no village there. Only near the bottom is the deserted house of the younger Lucenas, the other branch.

“Deserted?” echoed Floria involuntarily.

“No, sister,” interposed the Señora Paz, from her chair opposite; “there were always servants, and now Estevan de Lucena is exiled there by his lord.”

“Yes, yes,” murmured the Señora Celia, with the uncertain memory of the very old. “He they call El Sonriente. He came here once with Don Luís, and they stood out there together, my lord’s arms around his shoulder. I remember.”

“That was years ago, Celia,” said her sister reprovingly. “One does not recall those things now. Doña Floria, to see the other side of Rocaverde you must follow that little path; it is not far.”

“Thank you, señora,” responded Floria soberly. “I think I will stay here.”

But the next morning she went, drawn by half shrinking curiosity.

The little path ended in an open space, before which the reverse side of the mountain lay spread out with panoramic distinctness.

It was truly very different; thick pines took the place of cultivated orange and olive trees, clinging in dense masses up the irregular slopes and cliffs. At the foot, the sea roared along a rocky shore and dragged itself hissing across the bare sands, where clumps of sea-grass stood desolately. Near the bottom, a gray tower rose through the tree-tops quite alone; no cheerful cottages nestled on this side, filled with happy voices of women and children.

Yet the scented pine forests had a fascination of their own, as Floria presently realized. It was, at the least, a mile to the Quinta, she reflected; and Lucena had probably forbidden his cousin to wander over the hills. After a while she ventured a short distance under the trees, crushing the soft needles beneath her feet. Bright-eyed birds chirped fearlessly at her, tiny woodland animals scampered away with noiseless haste, pine-branches caught at her with perfumed fingers.

“And I can come here every day,” she assured herself joyously. “Never to embroider, never!”

When she returned to the house, the old ladies beamed upon her, drowsy, unquestioning. Lucena had given her the liberty he promised.

The next two weeks passed with flying feet. Farther and farther Floria extended her wanderings, emboldened by the absolute quiet and solitude. She found a little brook that served as a guide, and at first she did not stray beyond the sound of its tinkling ripple. But by and by she abandoned that precaution, and one day the inevitable happened.

She had followed a dazzling hummingbird, a tiny winged jewel that glittered always a few yards beyond her reach, and when it finally disappeared she looked up, to find herself lost.

“Our house is on the top of the mountain; I have only to go up,” she thought courageously.

The trees grew close together, stretching away in limitless avenues, with no sign to distinguish them apart. Floria chose one at random, and hurried on.

It had been late afternoon when she first discovered her position; now rosy twilight commenced to creep through the forest. At last she stopped, tired, bewildered, and somewhat frightened.

“I must be near home,” she exclaimed. “Perhaps if I call some one will hear, perhaps old Ramon.”

She lifted her head and sent her clear voice ringing through the silence. A squirrel peered around the trunk of a tree and chattered inquiringly. Floria laughed, and repeated the cry. In the pause that followed, she fancied a faint crash came from the right. She called again eagerly, and listened. Some one was coming; the snapping rustle of underbrush grew nearer.

“It is Ramon,” she reflected with relief.

But the figure which appeared through the trees was not that of the old gardener, and Floria gasped and paled. Lucena’s stern somber face passed before her; then suddenly the forest melted into dazzling violet and azure, while Arria’s bitter eyes shone over the telltale glove. Half in pity, half in aversion, she waited helplessly.

Estevan came slowly forward, regarding the young girl in silent surprise. A few feet from her, he stopped and bared his fair head.

“I can assist you, señorita?” he asked. His voice was grave, and singularly calm; his eyes met Floria’s directly and steadily. Some indefinable dread slipped away from her, and she answered with equal simplicity.

“I think I am lost, señor.”

“You must have come from the house of Ruy de la Vega, señorita; pardon, but there is no other.”

“Yes, I am Floria del Carpio. I came for a walk, and ventured too far.” She glanced away, then met his gaze again. “If you can help me I shall be very grateful, señor.”

Estevan hesitated; Floria, watching intently, read his belief that she did not know him. She understood the frown, the temptation not to enlighten her; she saw the effort that put the thought away.

“I am Estevan de Lucena, Doña Floria. With your permission, I will return to the Quinta and send some one to take you home.”

Floria colored deeply. The tacit acceptance of his outlawry, the foresight that spared them both her refusal of his escort, touched her with impulsive pity for a pride so fallen.

“It must be very far to the Quinta,” she suggested shyly, “and it will soon be dark. Could you not take me yourself, señor?”

Estevan made a movement, and cast a searching glance at the sweet, flushed face.

“I am honored, señorita,” he said, in the quiet tone that perhaps Lucena would not have recognized.

They turned and walked back over the ground that sent for the spicy perfume stored through uncounted years. Floria was at once amazed and appalled by her own action. All her Castilian loathing of treachery, all the feeling that had made her shrink from the lace that had lain in Estevan’s room, had momentarily deserted her; and in their place was only an unreasoning sympathy.

Yet the same generosity that had led her to save Mirando prevented her now from adding to Estevan’s punishment; the silence commenced to be embarrassing, and seeing he would not break it, Floria spoke herself.

“That is a beautiful dog, señor.”

Estevan looked down at the dignified animal stalking by his side.

“Taric and I are old friends,” he answered. “He is constant to a degree men would call folly.”

She fancied he thought of his own disloyalty, and changed the subject with nervous haste.

“Probably he would have found me, he looks so wise; and I need not have feared being lost forever.”

“Perhaps, but this side of the mountain is very dangerous. It is not safe for you to wander here without a guide, señorita.”

“Next time I shall be more careful,” she conceded. “It is so easy to lose oneself.”

“Very easy, señorita.”

Something in the answer brought a pause between them. Estevan turned his head, and recollection went sorrowing down the aisles of the past.

Floria, studying him from behind the shelter of her long lashes, was struck anew by the absence of something she had expected to find in his face. The calmness and repression of his voice were repeated in his expression, yet the traces of strong warfare were obvious in the beauty that was at once so like and unlike Arria’s. Certainly it was not suffering that she missed. She roused herself with a start.

“Is it much farther, señor?”

“No, señorita. Do you see that open space ahead? There is the edge of De la Vega’s place.”

“So close!” she exclaimed. “Are you quite sure? I walked a long time, señor.”

The shadow of Estevan’s old smile came back.

“Quite sure, señorita. The mountain forms an enormous follow here, and you followed around its sloping sides. There is the house; will you permit me to leave you?”

They stopped, facing each other.

“I thank you very much, señor,” Floria said, acutely conscious that to any one else she would have offered her hand.

Estevan looked at her, gently and steadfastly.

“Do you think I am the one who deserves gratitude for the last half hour?” he asked.

Floria caught her breath, and paled a little.

“My father has frequently spoken of you, Don Estevan,” she explained confusedly. “Two months ago he sent me to Rocaverde as the guest of––”   She checked herself.

But Estevan completed the sentence without flinching; lingering tenderly, indeed, on the name she had sought to spare him.

“Of Don Luís. Don Raimundo del Carpio has also spoken to me of his daughter, señorita; I recollected you at once.”

His eyes did not leave hers, and suddenly Floria realized the lack that had puzzled her––the lack of either remorse or bitterness in his expression. Sadness, yes; but nothing of that which should be read in the face of one who has betrayed a friendship, and failed in the loyalty which tradition had set level with religion. Nothing, on the other hand, of the sullen protest and resentment of one unjustly accused. Yielding to an impulse that left no time for reflection, she leaned toward him.

“Why do you stay here?” she demanded earnestly. “Why do you not go to Italy, France––anywhere but here?”

There was no need of explanation; Estevan answered with equal frankness.

“He told me to remain here. I shall never leave without his consent, and that I cannot ask.”

Floria knew he spoke of Lucena, and the reply contrasted strangely with his past rebellion. She stood in troubled silence, and in the moment Estevan recovered himself.

“Doña Floria, it is already dusk. Your friends will miss you, and there is an old man in the Quinta who will be anxious even for me if I do not return. May I say good night?”

“Good night, señor, she responded.

It was only a few yards to the house, and Floria crossed them slowly. At the door she looked back, but the dark line of forest told nothing. She had no way of knowing that he watched her from the shadow, a deeper shadow in his eyes. Long after the evening meal was over, long after she had fallen asleep in childish weariness, he still remained there.

During the next few days Floria stayed near the house, and found a new occupation in listening to the Señora Celia’s reminiscences. The old lady rambled from subject to subject, pleasantly and inconsequentially. She was of Rocaverde, and Rocaverde was of the sea; through all her stories crept its romance and peril. Many a tale Floria heard of the Lucenas, until, closing her eyes, she could feel the sweep of wet wind through her hair and hear the hurrying din of battle on the shivering decks; until the forest perfume gave place to the bitter-sweet chill of dawn on the water.

But never was Estevan mentioned except in connection with some act of gay good-humor or kindness; even his sternest bravery carried a wild grace of chivalry and youth. Listening, the young girl mutely wondered.

Before the end of the week, however, she was drawn back to the woods––the woods, with their alluring hush and repose. This time she carefully stayed on familiar ground. She discovered a spot where the brook lingered to form a tiny pool before continuing its way; she made this her chosen retreat, coming there every day.

It was nearly a month after her meeting with Estevan when Floria was first disturbed in this nook. She was kneeling by the pool one afternoon, dropping crumbs to the diminutive silver fishes, when a cold nose touched her hand and Taric’s intelligent eyes looked up at her. Floria sprang to her feet with a startled exclamation, and turned.

She had expected to see Estevan; so different was the figure confronting her that she stood motionless with astonishment. A little old man was waiting on the edge of the clearing, his bright brown eyes fixed on her with intent scrutiny. His thin, ascetic face was full of eagerness and interest; as Floria gazed at him, he advanced a few steps.

“You are the girl from Ruy de la Vega’s?” he inquired bruskly.

Floria flushed with surprise and displeasure.

“I am Floria del Carpio,” she answered, “I believe this place is in our part of the forest.”

“So it is. If you wish to cause trouble you can tell Don Estevan that I came here.”

“I shall not see Don Estevan to tell him anything, señor,” she retorted.

“You have seen him once, señorita,” he said, with a touch of malice.

“Because I was lost––because I could not help it!” she answered indignantly.

“If it had been possible, you would have refused his aid? So, señorita?”

The spirit of defiance seized Floria.

“No, señor, why should I?” she declared.

His withered face lit with unnatural youthfulness.

“Why indeed, señorita?” he cried vehemently. “Because there is no man or woman in Rocaverde who would walk at his side––who would not rather die on the mountain than call to him? Does that make him other than he is? They have judged him, these peasants who last year dared not stand covered before him; he is not worthy to be one of them! My lord will not even hear his name, nor remember that he exists. But does all this raise them, or lower him?”

“You think me mad, señorita; it is not so? I am Leone Valdi; I was Don Estevan’s tutor, and I have been with him since he was ten years old. Consider that during the last months I have watched him suffer enough to satisfy the most vindictive, and ask yourself if I can see a new shadow fall upon him! What did you say to him, señorita?”

“Nothing to give him pain,” answered Floria, in swift response to his earnestness. “Intentionally, nothing, señor Valdi.”

“When he came back that night it was to recommence the old battle. Señorita, you said something that shook to fragments his hard-won acceptance of this thing.”

The young girl’s soft eyes dilated in dawning comprehension.

“I asked why he stayed here,” she confessed. “I did not realize that he obeyed Don Luís, and I thought it would be easier for him––somewhere else, where no one knew.”

“You asked him that? Señorita, he has longed for that as you happy people cannot wish for anything. Do you know what the ocean is for the Lucenas––how the need, the passion, the desire for it leaps in their veins and draws them, calls them? Because he makes no complaint, do you think he has not fretted and chafed here in the wilderness?”

In the rush of conflicting thoughts Floria found no answer. The old man studied her for an instant, and his face relaxed.

“After all, it was kindly meant,” he said, after a pause. “Forgive me, señorita––  What is it?”

Floria had started suddenly.

“Some one passed over there,” she explained. “A man.”

“Don Estevan?” he demanded apprehensively.

“No. I could not see his face, but it was not Don Estevan.”

“They looked at each other, unreasoningly alarmed.

“No one goes there,” asserted Valdi. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, quite sure.”

He shook his head, but turned.

“I must go to the Quinta, señorita. You will not tell Don Estevan––or I can come no more?”

The idea of seeing him again gave Floria a thrill of pleasure and curiosity. The life she led was rather lonely, and there had even been hours when she regretted the room of embroidering women.

“No, no, I will not Señor Valdi,” she replied eagerly.

She watched him plunge into the forest, then walked slowly home.

As she approached the house a shout of delight greeted her; a boyish figure emerged from the courtyard and dashed down the slope.

“Juan!” she cried, in surprise.

“Yes, señorita,” he panted, snatching the cap from his black curls. “I have been waiting for you half an hour. He went to see you, then?”

“Who?” she questioned.

“Pedro Mirando. Oh, I will never tell of it, señorita; I only feared he came for something else.”

Floria laughed outright with amazement and relief; she also had thought of some one else.

“Certainly not, Juanito. I never saw your Pedro Mirando but once in my life. Why should he come to me?”

The boy met her candid gaze, and his own eyes fell.

He is one of my lord’s officers. Señorita, you did not see him in the woods?”

“Perhaps I do not know. Some one passed by at a little distance; I thought they were going to the Quinta.”

“Hush señorita!” he cried, and stood staring at her in helpless incredulity.

“But––”

He caught her hand impetuously.

“Señorita, if Mirando goes to the Quinta, it is for no good to my lord. Every one is forbidden to go there––every one. If Mirando risks it, why it is because he must meet Don Estevan! And Don Estevan has tried once to injure my lord.”

“But not again!” protested Floria. “Surely not again, Juan, after the forbearance of Don Luís!”

“I do not know,” he repeated. “I do not know.”

“Floria shook her head decisively.

“Juan, I do not believe it.”

The boy looked at her sharply.

“Señorita, you have changed toward him; have you seen Don Estevan?”

“Yes,” she admitted truthfully. “I was lost in the forest, and he brought me home. I cannot believe it.”

“I never trusted Pedro Mirando,” said Juan sullenly. “Señorita, you remember that day you spoke to me over the wall? You were right, and I will defend my lord. But I loved El Sonriente.”

“Where are you going, Juan?” she asked breathlessly, as he turned away.

He looked back, his boyish face set.

“I am going to follow Pedro Mirando,” he declared.

The old Quinta Lucena had not always been prohibited ground; many a time had Juan Perez led his more adventurous comrades on expeditions through the forest.

He ran steadily and directly, now, avoiding every cliff that might force a détour, and every misleading hill or avenue of trees.

The Quinta was not on the shore, but beside it a long cut ran in from the sea––a cut resembling a Norwegian fiord in somber gloom. Through this the water rushed roaring always; in storm it leaped up the sheer sides, so as to dash the building itself with spray. As Juan reached the last row of trees, he saw Estevan and Mirando standing on the edge of this cliff.

After a moment he made his way in that direction, sore at heart, but determined. A broad stone railing bordered the cliff; by the aid of this and an angle of the Quinta, he crept close enough to see distinctly, and hear a little. And the first sentence was sufficiently startling.

“You might have been killed before now, señor,” Mirando was saying, “if we had wished that. You are defenseless enough in this place.”

Estevan glanced at him, something of Lucena’s cynicism in his expression.

“I am more useful alive, then?” he asked in his clear steady voice, strangely unfamiliar to the listening boy without its rippling undercurrent of merriment.

Mirando moved impatiently.

“Señor, we were selfish, if you will; we saved ourselves at your cost; but that does not make us the criminals you imply. We are trying now to save you from what will not help us. My lord’s mood has grown darker and darker; you know that with him delay never means forgetfulness.

“The morning he sailed, when he bade farewell to Doña Soledad, he visited Doña Arria in the garden. One of the waiting-women overheard her cry out upon him for keeping you a prisoner; he answered that your life was his, and that he would not change a sentence pronounced. Since then, Doña Arria has grown whiter and more restless with the passing days, and changes color when my lord’s return is mentioned. Señor, when he comes, you die.”

“That may be. But you have not left me much to grieve for her, Señor Mirando.” Estevan spoke composedly, although his eyes were never farther from their old gayety.

“Here, no,” Mirando acknowledged. “I did not mean here, señor. Have you forgotten the rest––the open sea, the writhing deck beneath your feet, the long cry of the gulls across a wind-swept arch of sky? You rejoiced in the chance of battle, the flash of steel crossed by the flash of spray; you loved to live. Have all these things ended because this little island condemns you? Don Estevan, the east and west lie before you; go, before my lord returns.”

Estevan pushed the fair hair from his forehead; the gesture was so familiar that Juan choked in his corner.

“I do not trust your benevolence, Mirando. If you want me to leave––to escape––it is because you have some reason for it. Are you plotting against Don Luís once more, and am I in the way?”

“No, señor!” denied the other hastily. “We have had enough of that.”

“Ah! Then what is it––are you afraid that my courage will fail, and that I will tell Don Luís the truth?”

Mirando met his scornful smile and flushed dully under his sallow skin.

“Not that you fear death, señor,” answered, sinking his tone. “But, suppose you face what he meant for Gonsalvo. Could you––could any man––keep silence?”

It was Don Estevan’s turn to color, the scarlet rushing to his temples.

“Are you mad, Pedro Mirando?” he exclaimed, in anger and contempt. “You, to try to fathom Don Luís with your measure––you, to peer into a mind you cannot dimly conceive! You speak of my cousin, my cousin; he may kill me––he has cause––but never that! Go and never come here again! Go, you have had from me all you will obtain!”

Mirando retreated a step.

“Señor” he began, but Estevan turned from him unheedingly.

Juan drew nearer, for the man’s expression was very evil; and Estevan’s back was toward him, as he leaned on the rail and gazed into the swirling water below in the dark ravine. Mirando shrugged his shoulders, and descended the sloping terrace. Juan waited until the trees had closed between, and slipped after him. At the edge of the forest the boy looked back, but Estevan had not moved.

Floria had remained under the Señora Celia’s grape-vines, watching anxiously for Juan’s return. When he finally reappeared among the pines, she gathered up her trailing dress and ran to meet him.

“You found him?” she demanded.

Juan regarded her, his black eyes gloomy.

“Yes, señorita, I found him; he went to the Quinta.”

“And––Don Estevan?”

“I do not know!” he cried earnestly. “I know nothing that helps. They talked together, but of the old things, and of Gonsalvo. Mirando urges him to escape before my lord comes back.”

“Why?” she asked eagerly.

Juan hesitated, then closed his lips firmly.

“I do not know; at least––I have nothing to tell you, señorita. But they spoke of no new danger to my lord.”

“Don Estevan is right to stay,” Floria said, after a brief pause. “It would be cowardly to run away, Juan.”

Juan glanced at her almost angrily, then suddenly flung himself face downward on the ground.

“Madre de Dios!” he wailed, “I loved him, I loved him! And I hate my lord!”

“Juan!” protested Floria, bending over him in alarmed distress.

He said no more, shaken from head to foot in rebellious grief. The long afternoon shadows commenced to creep down the mountain; the rising breeze stirred among the trees.

“Doña Floria!” called the Señora Paz from the house.

“Go in, señorita,” murmured Juan brokenly. “I am going home directly.

Floria laid her hand gently on his tangled curls, then went quietly away.

Contrary to Floria’s expectations, Juan did not return. She waited a few days, and then resumed her visits to the forest.

Leone Valdi had interested her, and she was curious to know if he would keep his promise to see her. Even to herself Floria would not admit that she desired to hear more of Estevan, although she recognized clearly enough the fascination he possessed. Juan loved him, she reflected, and the old man; Doña Soledad herself had once softened strangely in alluding to him, while Lucena––Remembering his face, her aversion for Estevan flared up again.

Valdi did not forget. He joined Floria the first day she revisited the pool in the woods. The two met with the friendship of mutual loneliness, and after that he came frequently, sometimes two or three days in succession, again missing as many.

Floria learned that he was an Italian by birth, and that Estevan’s father had brought him from Florence to instruct his little son. And Valdi had fulfilled the task well, not neglecting to bring his pupil Dante and Boccaccio as a diversion from his graver classical studies. The Renaissance had come to Rocaverde and added its golden touch, blending Spanish chivalry and Norse sternness into the Estevan and Lucena of the present. To Lucena, such studies had been toys, now unregarded; but Valdi related, with pathetic pride, that to them Estevan turned in his long, desolate days.

Floria listened seriously, her large, soft eyes very thoughtful. The old tutor spoke readily of Estevan and often evening overtook them deeply engrossed in some tale of land or sea in which he was the principal. But of the crime which had brought him an exile to the Quinta, Valdi said nothing. Once, when an unusually long time had elapsed between the visits, he yielded the explanation.

“Señorita, there was a storm for two days. When the wind blows strong and bitter salt, and the sea dashes hissing up the rocks, calling, calling––then it is hardest. Last night when I followed him to the edge of the cliff, he bade me go in and leave him. ‘He at least can face it out there; I am shut in this prison,’ he said, and the shrieking gale tore the words from his lips as he spoke.”

“He meant Don Luís?” questioned Floria.

Valdi scrutinized her sharply.

“How should I know?” he replied evasively, and would talk no more that day.

The summer advanced, with continuous and increasing heat. The Señora Celia shook her head, and spoke of tempests sure to follow sooner or later. Floria, looking down the yellow road where the sunlight seemed to poise in airy whirlpools, did not wonder that Juan preferred to stay in the sheltered village.

But one morning another visitor came––a visitor who threw the good Señoras de la Vega into the mild agitation they called excitement. Floria was in the shaded stone courtyard among the tubs of flowering plants, and heard nothing of the clatter and noise of arrival, until the unusual rustle of silken robes aroused her. She turned then, and gave a cry of delighted surprise.

“Arria!” she exclaimed, dropping all her gathered blossoms as she sprang forward.

Arria suffered herself to be embraced, and even returned the caress.

“You look well,” she commented, with cool serenity, her violet eyes searching the bright, contented face.

Floria laughed joyously.

“Of course, I am always well; and you are always beautiful. You are like the Grecian statue of tinted ivory and gold. Did you really come to see me––just for that, Arria?”

“Yes. Doña Soledad objected, but I usually do as I wish.”

“Señorita de Lucena! Command is in your blood, I imagine. Are you tired––will you come in the house?”

“I am not tired; I want to talk with you where it is quiet.

Floria nodded appreciatively.

“Then we will go to my room. Is it not pleasant up here, Arria?”

“It is pleasant for a De la Vega,” Arria returned, glancing indifferently around. “For you, after Castile and the castle––”

Floria smiled, and did not reply until they reached the square-raftered room she called her own.

“Perhaps I contrasted it with the convent where I may go. Arria, you are not angry with me any longer?”

Arria laid aside the filmy veils that had shielded her from the dust and took the chair opposite Floria’s.

“I was angry because I believed you cared for Don Luís,” she stated calmly.

“Oh!” Floria gasped, blushing so deeply that even her white throat was stained with rose.

Arria regarded her unmoved.

“Because I told Don Luís a childish legend, Arria––because he sent for me to ask about Mirando?”

“Yes.”

“And how did you find out that I did not?”

The smile that curved the other’s lips was all Lucena.

“It does not matter if you do. Don Luís loves me.”

Floria shrank a little, her dark eyes reproachful.

“I think that sounds cruel, Arria,” she said seriously. “But I am very glad you and Don Luís are happy. I––if ever I care for any one, it will be for some one I do not fear. Indeed, I did not understand; I thought you disliked Don Luís, and were angry because I amused him that day.”

“Why should I dislike Don Luís because Estevan de Lucena deceived him?” demanded Arria hardly. “Estevan’s is the fault––Estevan is the bar between us––it is Estevan whom I must defend while I know that if I were Don Luís I would kill him!”

“Arria, Arria, he is your brother!”

“And the kinsman of Don Luís.”

Floria twisted her small fingers together, struggling against an utterly unreasonable desire to protect Estevan from the arraignment. Arria arose and walked to the window, shaken from her habitual composure of bearing. After a moment she came back.

“Floria, Don Luís once called you a dainty child; he was right, and you cannot comprehend. This much is so: I cannot, will not, marry Luís de Lucena while Estevan is before the eyes of Rocaverde in his disgrace. I have asked Don Luís to send him away, and he refused Mirando came to me yesterday.”

“Mirando?” echoed Floria, startled.

“Yes. He tells me he was Estevan’s chosen officer and aide, and would still help him if he could. He is convinced that Estevan will be in great danger when Don Luís returns, and he urges him to escape now. I do not believe in the danger, although there is no way to gage [sic] a Lucena’s moods, but I want Estevan to go. I want him out of Rocaverde, and he refuses to leave.”

“Because Don Luís bade him stay!” answered Floria warmly. “Arria, it would be cowardly to escape now, when he is left unguarded and unconfined.”

Arria raised her eyebrows.

“Does Estevan de Lucena still lay claim to a sense of honor?” she asked with slow contempt.

“You have no pity!” exclaimed Floria. “If he suffers for what is done––if he would give Don Luís all that is left to give––is it for you to prevent?”

“And I? Have I no right to happiness, because he chooses to pay a tardy obedience? He must go; if it causes him pain, it is of his own sowing.”

“What will you do?”

“I shall write to him through Mirando, and remind him of his duty to me.”

There was a long pause.

“‘Strike not in the dawn of thy wrath, lest when the sun go down it leave you desolate,’” repeated Floria with pensive gravity. “I think Don Luís has learned that lesson, Arria, better––forgive me––better than you.”

Arria remained silent.

“I do not like this Pedro Mirando,” continued Floria presently. “That time we went to the violet room, he came there not expecting to meet us; and it was because he had been found there again that Don Luís came to question me. What does he seek in Don Estevan’s rooms?”

“He was Estevan’s friend; perhaps for that reason the place is agreeable to him.”

Floria moved her head doubtfully.

“I would not trust him.”

“He wants what I want,” Arria replied. “I care nothing why.”

A suspicion of Floria’s roguish smile appeared.

“Perhaps neither of you will have it,” she suggested.

“You mean, he will not go?”

“I mean that if you and Mirando can change him from a resolution held through so many dreary months, through so many torturing thoughts as we can scarcely guess––”

“Well?”

“I shall believe no more in the Lucena firmness.”

Arria sighed, and glanced at her almost with irritation.

“I did not come to you for discouragement, Floria. If he does persist, I can do nothing.”

“I should marry Don Luís,” Floria answered. “Arria, mia, do you fancy Rocaverde will forget merely because Don Estevan is not here? Don Luís carries in his face that which will ever keep memory awake. If you feel this grief is shame to you––”

“I do.”

“Then cure, not hide it. Arria, pay you to Don Luís the debt of love your brother owes.”

Arria met the splendid, kindling eyes, and for a passing instant realized the pettiness of her own pride––that she planned an added bitterness for Lucena as well as Estevan.

“I do not know Don Luís as you must,” Floria went on, “but I know that he loved his cousin, and I cannot believe Don Estevan is in peril. Go to your betrothed, Arria, and trust his generosity to free his prisoner in time.”

With an abrupt movement, Arria rose and flung out her hands, as if to put away the charm that held her.

“Never!” she declared determinedly. “Never shall there be a wedding at the castle while there is a captive at the Quinta. I will write to Estevan, and if he stays––”

“As I believe he will.”

“Then will come the struggle between Don Luís and me.”

“Arria, can you doubt who will be the victor?”

“You think I fear him?”

“Do you not?”

Blue eyes and dark crossed. Arria turned away and picked up her veils, proceeding to drape them carefully around her golden head with its high, jeweled combs.

“Are you coming back to the castle with me?” she asked.

“You are going now?”

“Yes, I promised Doña Soledad that I would return before the noonday heat. You will go with me?”

“But Floria drew back from the proposal, with hasty denial.

“Thank you, Arria, no. I love this place, indeed.”

“As you will. When you tire of this, we will welcome you below. You still play your guitar?”

“Surely; the señoras even keep awake in their chairs to listen. The Señora Celia likes best ‘The Heart’s Swift Dreams’––you remember?” She sent the clear, soft notes floating through the room as she spoke

Ay, dark-winged thoughts that cross my heart,

Like birds o’er the sky of the past.

Arria regarded her meditatively.

“Your thoughts are all rainbow-winged,” she said. “You were created to be happy.

Floria’s eyes shadowed strangely.

“They called your brother El Sonriente,” she answered, under her breath.

“He chose his path,” retorted Arria coldly. “If he laughs no more, it is for his own act.”

They went out to where the little train of attendants waited.

The end of Floria’s conversation with Leone Valdi came unexpectedly, and only a few days after Arria’s visit. The intense heat of the summer culminated during this last week in a very ordeal of fire, which left Rocaverde parched and quivering under the white, straight rays which day after day beat down.

Floria, young and vigorous, defied the head and went to the forest as usual; and on the last day loneliness drove Valdi also to the rendezvous.

“Don Estevan was reading,” he said to Floria. “Yesterday I opened an old chest––one of our many forgotten things––and it held strange Eastern manuscripts, and old trinkets dusty with age. Señorita, among them was this one that made me think of you, and so I brought it to you.”

He laid in her hand a long chain, a series of alternating jewels––topaz and faintly pink pearls strung on a thread of flexible gold. Through many months, perhaps years, some artisan of the Orient had collected and matched this toy for a petted sultana or lithe dancing-girl, and a Lucena of the past had snatched it away, to lie buried among his uncounted treasures. Floria gave a cry of surprise and admiration as she received the exquisite thing.

“Ah, but I must not keep it, Señor Valdi. I have no right.”

“I give it to you, señorita; Don Estevan gave it to me.”

Floria did not shrink from it as once she had recoiled from the lace that had rested in the violet room; instead, she slowly wound it round her throat and looked over to reply.

But the chain was destined to mute acceptance; with her first word, a terrific peal of thunder broke almost above their heads. Floria’s cry was drowned in the rolling echoes, and Valdi rose to his feet. Under the thick trees, neither had perceived the clouds massing sullenly in the sky.

“We must go!” exclaimed Floria in dismay. “Señor Valdi, we shall never reach the house in time!”

“Not your house,” he answered through the rising wind. “Come this way!”

Despite her terror, Floria drew back.

“No, no. Indeed, I cannot.”

A second and louder peal of thunder followed her protest.

“Not to the Quinta!” Valdi shouted, catching her hand. “There is an old hut––come!”

“She yielded, and together they plunged through the forest. Before they reached the abandoned cottage, great drops of rain were falling. Valdi flung open the door, and they entered tempestuously––Floria rosy and laughing, her soft hair shaken loose and curling riotously around her throat and temples.

“You are wet señorita?” inquired Valdi breathlessly.

“No, not wet––but it is so noisy, and I am still dazzled,” she replied gaily. “One sees nothing!”

She turned to the old man, growing more accustomed to the semi-darkness. Some one moved from the opposite corner.

“Give Doña Floria a chair, Leone,” directed a grave, level voice. “And close the door!”

Floria caught her breath.

“Pardon, señor,” she said at once. “The lightning was in my eyes; I did not see you.”

Estevan bowed, and she sank into the chair Valdi offered.

“I did not know there was a house here, señor,” she remarked presently.

Valdi had withdrawn to the other side of the room, leaving them practically alone.

“The peasants who lived here deserted it months ago,” Estevan answered. “Few know of its existence, señorita.”

“I think the mountain does not like me,” she said playfully. “This is twice I have appealed to you, Don Estevan, for rescue from its caprices.”

“The Lucenas and the mountain have always been kind to each other, señorita.”

“They understand one another? Indeed I believe you are alike––so steadfastly calm without, and with––” She checked herself hastily, conscious that the subject was scarcely discreet. She was bewildered and uncertain of what she said, if it only prevented uncomfortable pauses.

“But Estevan lifted his head, the color rising under his fair, clear skin. Whatever unhappy completion he gave her sentence––however he interpreted her abrupt stop––Floria saw that he was deeply offended.

“Please do not misunderstand me,” she said, with graceful directness. “My indiscretion went no further than to contemplate saying that you were both kind to those for whom you cared. I have seen the mountain in the sunshine, and you––” She glanced at Valdi.

Estevan smiled, his face brightening as he looked into hers.

“Leone has been talking to you, Doña Floria? Forgive us both all his exaggerations; he fancies, indeed, that I have been kind to him, and is Italian enough to remember it.”

As once before, Floria was grateful for the tact that accepted the first part of her speech without comment. Before she could reply, the storm broke over the forest with a violence that rendered conversation impossible. Valdi retreated still farther into the room, his lips moving noiselessly. Estevan leaned nearer Floria.

“You are not frightened, señorita? There is little actual danger.”

“No, señor.”

The darkness increased, and they remained silent, watching the torrents of rain. The thunder had been almost continuous, but suddenly there came a pause, and the tempest seemed to hesitate.

“Oh, it is going to stop!” exclaimed Floria, rising eagerly. “See, it is lighter!”

In answer there was a blinding glare that filled the room with lavender light, followed by a savage, crashing roar. Floria cried out; and clasping one hand across her eyes, flung out the other in search of support. A second crash followed, and the cottage distinctly quivered.

When Floria ventured to look up, she was leaning against Estevan’s breast; his eyes were fixed on her with a concentrated passion of tenderness and hopeless grief that held her absolutely mute.

Only for a moment; then she disengaged herself, flushing warmly crimson.

“Pardon, señor,” she faltered, “the thunder frightened me.”

Unconscious of his self-betrayal, for the darkness had hidden the unclosing of Floria’s darker eyes, Estevan answered with the composure so hardly learned.

“Not without cause, señorita; the tree was very close.”

She turned quickly, and saw a gigantic pine lying across the threshold, its branches blackened and twisted. She uttered a faint exclamation, shuddering.

“It will soon be over,” he added, offering her the chair again.

Floria accepted it gladly, and looked out at the clearing sky. Neither spoke, until a ray of sunlight shot through the dripping forest.

“I am thinking of what the señoras will say,” Floria declared, with her dimpling smile. “Shall I be able to go home now, señor?”

“It is scarcely fit for you,” returned Estevan, in perplexity.

“Indeed, I do not mind,” she assured him sincerely

Valdi was smoothing his rumpled attire in his corner; crossing to him, Floria held out her hand.

“Good-by, Señor Valdi,” she said demurely. “I hope the next time we meet it will not be in a tornado.”

“Estevan opened the door for her as she approached.

“I have permission to accompany you, Doña Floria?” he asked.

“If you will be so good, señor.”

As they crossed the threshold a rainbow flashed out––a glittering arch over the island––and the heavy perfume of the drenched woods saluted them. Floria drew a breath of sheer delight.

“There cannot be another place in the world so lovely,” she asserted.

Something was sending the blood in swift irregular leaps and rushes through her veins––something wild and sweet that had risen beneath Estevan’s gaze. He held aside the branches of the fallen tree that she might pass. They walked on, the pines shaking tiny diamonds down on Floria’s hair as they went. Turbulent rivulets ran across their path, and the birds were calling shrill comments on the storm. Lifting her hand, Floria accidentally touched the chain of gems which Valdi had given her. The gesture drew Estevan’s attention, and glancing up she met his eyes.

“You are looking at Señor Valdi’s necklace,” she said frankly. “I am afraid it is one of the Quinta’s treasures––is it not beautiful?”

“Where it is now, yes, señorita. The Quinta contains many such forgotten trinkets; this one is most fortunate.”

She smiled faintly, blushing.

“The Quinta should be a place of legends, señor; you must love it.”

Estevan’s firm lips set a little bitterly.

“Legends and memories, señorita. I loved the roofless waters.”

“Yet the Quinta must have pleasant memories, Don Estevan,” she suggested, half timidly. “Can these past months quite overshadow them all?”

He started slightly; it was their first approach to the subject never absent from their thoughts.

“If it were so, Doña Floria, the last hour would make the Quinta a different place,” he said, with a gentleness that verged near the expression she had surprised in his face during the storm.

She bent her head, not daring to look at him.

“When you return to Castile,” he added after a moment, “it will be the happy side of Rocaverde you will remember––the castle and village and laughing bay; shall I be forgiven for saying that the dark forest will longest remember you?”

“Señor––”

“We are very near the border of the woods, Doña Floria. If ever again you visit Rocaverde––I believe they told me you would soon go to your home––it is probable I shall be no longer at the Quinta. I bid you good-by very gratefully, señorita, for a graciousness unfamiliar.”

Floria stopped, facing him.

“Señor, you are going to do as Arria wishes––you are going away?”

Her cry shattered the dangerous charm that had fallen upon them both. Estevan flung back his head, with the expression of one confronted with a struggle often renewed.

“Señorita, I am pained to disappoint you––no. Arria’s wishes are those of a child; I wait for Don Luís.”

But it was not disappointment that rose in Floria’s shining eyes.

“I knew you could not do that, señor,” she said simply, and held out her hand.

Estevan flushed suddenly and deeply, then as quickly paled again.

“You mean this, señorita?” he demanded, almost harshly.

Very reverently he took the small hand in his, not raising it to his lips as Lucena had done.

“May every happiness follow you, Doña Floria. Good-by.”

“Good night, señor,” she responded, avoiding the sadder word.

But Estevan remained silent.

The little household on the mountaintop had been sorely agitated by the storm, and Floria’s absence had not been noticed. The Señora Paz asked if she had been in her room, and Floria answered evasively. That was all: but the young girl’s eyes were starry bright and feverish excitement quivered along the broken current of her thoughts.

Late that night she looked from her window; the island hung poised between two heavens––the crystal and velvet arch above and its flawless reflection below––the Mediterranean spreading a floor of stars as far as she could see. Lucena was out there, she reflected; and she felt her heart go out to the man who sorrowed for Estevan. After a while, she laid her cheek upon the chain of topaz and pearl.

The next day dawned with a return of the cloudless sky and merciless heat. Nothing daunted, Floria went as usual to the forest.

Traces of the storm were everywhere––torn branches strewing the ground, overturned birds-nests, and new muddy brooks. The pool itself had swept down its banks, and had become a miniature swamp. Floria contemplated the wreck in dismay, her dress gathered about her as she stood on the higher ground. She was too absorbed to notice Valdi’s arrival, until he spoke.

“Señorita,” he said, in a cautiously subdued voice.

Floria turned with pleasure.

“You, Señor Valdi! I fancied you would not come to-day.

He raised his finger warningly, and looked around.

“Hush, señorita! I do not know where Don Estevan may be. This is the last time I shall see you.”

“The last time! You are going away––you are going to leave the Quinta?”

“No, señorita. On the contrary, I will stay there. I am ordered to come here no more.”

She regarded him wonderingly.

“But why, señor?”

Valdi shrugged his shoulders, and was silent.

“Why?” she urged.

His sharp brown eyes studied her a second before he replied.

“Don Estevan loves you, señorita: can he take you to the Quinta?”

Before the fact thus certainly stated, Floria stood wordless.

“Or can he go to your Castile? Neither? Then let him choose his course––as once before he chose it, in spite of my lord himself. Last night you gave him your hand.”

The abrupt transition startled her.

“You know?” she murmured.

“He told me. Last night when he came in––there are things that make one old to witness, señorita. But he bade me go no more to talk with you.”

“Because you speak to me of him?” she questioned softly.

“He would guard you from what has come to him.”

Floria moved her head in tranquil denial.

“It is too late, señor.”

“Señorita!” he cried.

She came up to him, her glowing face most earnest.

“I can help,” she assured him eagerly. “You do not know how kind Don Luís has always been to me, and he grieves that Don Estevan should be here. I will go to him when he returns––you shall see.”

But Valdi’s expression remained unconvinced; he had no faith in Lucena’s kindness. Moreover, he had seen Arria’s letter to her brother. By Mirando’s subtle advice, she had carefully refrained from reassuring Estevan as to Lucena’s intentions. She, of course, had no idea that Mirando had woven circumstances and falsehood into a fabric that left Estevan little room for doubt. Of all this Valdi had been commanded not to speak, and it cost him something to comply.

“When my lord comes home, it will be better that you return to your country, señorita,” he said dejectedly. “What a Lucena has decided to do will be done, and that race is not to he swerved.”

Floria smiled in unshaken confidence, already intent on her own plans.

“You will see,” she repeated.

Valdi gazed at her as she leaned against a tree, her long, dark lashes sweeping her flushed cheeks. After a pause he drew quietly back, retreating step by step until the forest swallowed him, still keeping his eyes fixed on the thoughtful figure. Floria made no effort to stop him; in fact, she scarcely perceived his departure.

That afternoon Juan Perez came up from the village for the first time in weeks, and found Floria in the courtyard under the yellow roses. He responded to her greeting with an air approaching the morose, and flung himself down on the ground at her feet.

“I believed you had forgotten me, she said lightly. “You have nothing to tell me? Are you all well and happy in the village?”

“We are as always, señorita. Emilia Diaz spends all her days on the shore watching for the sails, and Rosa Paredes is betrothed for the sixth time. Padre Jacinto misses you very much, Doña Floria; he says the castle was never so dull. I think he has grown grayer, these last months.”

Floria bent forward to see his face.

“Something is wrong with you, Juanito.”

“My lord has already been away longer than usual,” he answered sullenly. “He must return soon.”

“I hope so,” she said, very gently.

Juan sat up impetuously, staring at her.

“You want him to come back, señorita?”

“Why not?”

“You look,” he mused irrelevantly, “like Emilia, the day Diaz came home. Is it––that, señorita?

She made no reply, but her great eyes were mystic, splendid in their new radiance. Juan caught her dress.

“If it is,” he stammered breathlessly, “if it is––you will help Don Estevan––you will save him?”

She hid her face on the arm of the chair, and her falling bronze hair veiled her from his gaze. Juan’s hot, daring young lips pressed her soft hand.

“I will love my lord now, if I can,” he whispered. “You will forget the foolish things I have said, not knowing, señorita––because I will serve you all my life.”

And Floria, her cheek resting on the palm Estevan had touched, perceived nothing of his mistake. After a while, Juan shipped quietly away and left her alone.

The afternoon moved placidly on. When the evening meal was over, Juan took his leave, lingering to glance back at the dark eyes that persistently avoided his.

The Señora Paz was occupied with come bit of sewing; in the seat opposite, her sister fell into snatches of sleep and as suddenly started awake, with monotonous alternation. Floria regarded them dreamily, the silent guitar on her knee. Over the Mediterranean the moon mounted into the sky, round, perfect, the full-blown flower of light.

“I remember,” said the Señora Celia, breaking from a doze into one of her fragmentary reminiscences, “I remember when Jayme de Lucena brought home his white wife. From far across the oceans she came, from another great island which they say is a place of mist and fog. Rosamond he called her, and for beauty she was the very lady who came here the other day. Only, the smile of Doña Rosamond was a sunshine of the heart, and her son has her laughing eyes.

“But, when Don Jayme went down by the side of his lord and brother, and they died together as they had lived, the Lady Rosamond pined, and followed him in a few months. Often I saw her, pacing up and down the great arched hall of the castle in her black velvet robes, the black lace over her yellow hair, leading the little girl, while Don Estevan walked beside them. Ay de mi, poor lady! Sister, is that fair girl her daughter?”

“Yes, Doña Arria it was who came here. Celia, think of other things!” replied the Señora Paz, with some impatience.

Floria quietly leaned the guitar against her chair, and rising, went to the door. After a moment she stepped into the moonlit plateau before the house, and stood gazing at the lights of the village twinkling far below.

She was aroused from her reverie by a voice so unexpected, so apparently impossible, that she allowed the call to be repeated before answering.

“Doña Floria!” it came.

“Señor?” she faltered, turning.

Estevan was standing on the edge of the cleared space, a conspicuous figure in the brilliant light, as he waited with uncovered head for her reply. Floria crossed to him, wide-eyed and suddenly shy.

“Señorita, you are certainly right to be surprised,” he said, with quiet gravity. “Will you yield so much to my position as to permit me to speak to you here?”

Slightly to one side, a rustic chair was set in the shelter of a tall bush. For answer, she moved there and sat down, lifting her trustful face to him.

Estevan paused; when he spoke, it was not quite steadily.

“You are more than good to me, señorita. If I have ventured here tonight, it is because I feared––Leone has told me you spoke of Don Luís.”

“He told you that!” she exclaimed, coloring hotly.

“Leone has few secrets from me, señorita. He fancied you thought of helping me––”

His hesitation gave her courage.

“Yes,” she answered. “Don Luís would listen to me, I am quite sure; I am not afraid, indeed. Señor Valdi said that I had troubled you, and I meant to ask that you might go away. I know you could not go as Arria wished, but openly––it would be different. You are not angry, señor?”

“Angry! Doña Floria, if you could understand!” He checked himself with a violent effort, and shook his head impatiently. “Forgive me, it is so long since I have met kindness that I acknowledge it awkwardly. Señorita, there are no words for my gratitude, but what you imagine is not possible. I ask it of you earnestly––never think of that again!”

“Why? she asked, risking to face him with a child’s impetuousness. “Why, señor? You are not guilty of the thing they say; if you were, do you think I would be here, or that I would have given you my hand the other evening? I do not ask you to explain––I know it is not so.”

Estevan stood still, his eyes on hers.

“What has Leone told you?” he demanded.

“Nothing!” she answered passionately, “I believe I knew it the first day. You could not have done that. Perhaps you are shielding some one else––some one dear to you; such things have happened.”

“I would not have brought this disgrace on my house to shield the guilt of any one living!” Estevan retorted.

“I do not ask you to explain; I only know you never did that thing––I know.”

“And if I told you I had? Remember, I made no defense––I never will.”

She moved a step nearer––never more lovely, never more purely maidenly.

“I love you,” she said, bravely and sweetly. ‘‘ Will you tell me that now, Don Estevan?”

Where Lucena had failed, Floria conquered. All the loneliness of the past months was in the movement that swept her to his arms.

“No!” he exclaimed, his voice breaking in surrender. “Not to you––not to you!”

They rested so for a long moment.

“I am guilty now, indeed,” he said at last. ‘‘ Floria, how have I let you care for me? I was mad to come here to-night––to let your dear graciousness tempt me to linger by you in the forest. What have we done, Leone and I?”

“It was not your fault, nor mine,” she murmured. “All my life I have known this hour would come to me. I have walked to it through sunshine and you—through what sorrow!”

“Dear, then destiny gave you a sad inheritance.”

“No.”

“No? When I have not so much to offer you as the poorest sailor in Don Luís’ fleet? Floria––”

She raised her eyes to meet his and stopped the sentence.

“I said it to you,” she protested softly. “If you care, say it to me.”

He said it, with indescribable reverence.

The long look that followed left them so close in spirit as few ever become. Estevan, standing on this frail hour, poised between past and future tragedy, felt with the young girl an ethereality of love which neither claimed nor desired the things of earth. Floria’s serene and radiant face, set lily-like in the sea of silver light, blinded him to both Quinta and castle. Floria gave to him that which Arria had denied to Lucena, a brief forgetfulness.

But of the strength of his love was born recollection, and he bent his head over hers as the burden slipped back.

“I have been selfish, cruel. Love of mine, we must go back to our own worlds; with me you can have nothing to do.”

Floria smiled in soft content.

“Nothing to do, Estevan––after this? No, you will let me tell Don Luís, and in some other country you can make a home for us. And my father––he will trust you as I do, and take us both away.”

Estevan looked away from her clear untroubled eyes, and she felt him shiver.

“Floria, you must ask Don Luís nothing for me. Can your trust yield me so much?”

“Yes,” she answered. “If you wish that, Estevan, I will come to the Quinta.”

“You would dare? Dear, how can I make you understand?”

“Do no try to-night,” she pleaded. To-morrow, if you will, but not to-night.”

The house-door opened suddenly, bringing a glare of yellow light.

“Señorita!” called an uncertain voice.

“It is the Señora Paz,” she whispered. “To-morrow?”

“Where you met Leone. Floria––”

A sighing breeze rustled the shrubbery and startled awake a sleepy bird, who sent forth the first notes of his song, then stopped abashed.

The Señora Paz waiting placidly on the step, smiled admiringly at Floria, as she came up.

“The night is hot and still,” she remarked, dropping the wooden bolt in place. “Doña Floria, a very rose of spring has our mountain made you.”

The Señora Celia looked up dreamily.

“Rose of the world, Don Jayme called her,” she corrected, her thoughts far afield. “But such roses wither without the sun.”

Floria went on to her own room, her eyes still dazzled by the glance that had met them, her lips still softly curved with the wonder of their first kiss. Finding herself alone, she remained standing a little while in the center of the floor; then moved to her favorite low chair and sat down.

Gradually the house sank into silence; one by one the lights flickered out. After a while, Floria rose and crossed to the window. The night was in truth unusually still; up here there was not even the lap of the sea to break the hush. Overhead the moon hung now, and under its direct rays Floria saw the betraying shadow by the flowering bush.

“Señor!” she called daringly, not venturing to utter aloud the name that would have startled into attention any listener in Rocaverde.

The tall figure came to her promptly, yet with a certain hesitation.

“I saw you,” she said, leaning on the broad stone sill to regard his face. “I think––I think I knew that you would not go away so soon. To-night is all ours, to-morrow we do not know. Do you not wish to-night would linger forever in Rocaverde, Estevan?”

“Dear, but to-morrow will surely come,” answered Estevan tenderly. “Is this safe for you?”

The window was just so high that they might have touched each other’s hands; their low tones ran no risk of waking a household so dull.

“There is no one to hear,” she replied. “Estevan do not look so grave; give me this hour without thought of what is to come. Will it make to-morrow different because we grieve to-night?”

“Truly, I believe not,” he admitted, his warm gentle smile flashing up. “Love of mine, what shall I say to make this hour yours? Tell me again all that you know so well; that when I saw you first you entered the gates of my heart, and closed them behind you?”

“If you will. Or why, when I crossed the threshold of the violet room, something shot through my veins to warn me a friend had dwelt there.”

“The violet room?” he questioned, puzzled.

“Your room. The Italian romance still lies on the table; the scarf still rests where you let it fall; the silence listens for your voice. Ah, forgive me––it is I, now, who sadden you.”

“No, no. But tell me, rather, of yourself.”

“You know all of me that matters,” she answered simply. “The Floria of the court, the Floria of the castle––they were only shadow girls until the Floria of to-night. The world lies like a silver lotus open to the moon, and Rocaverde is its golden heart. Estevan, when my ship anchored in the bay, I fancied this island resembled a great garden in Fez––all emerald and gold and white, with the splash of fountains and perfumes of the south. You have heard of those flower-girdled palaces?”

“I have seen them, alma mia.”

“Seen them? You, Estevan––a Spanish noble, a Christian––have visited the stronghold of Morocco? I thought death waited long before you neared its shore!”

“Yes. But five years ago Don Luís was wounded and made prisoner by the Moors, through a trick, and I went to Fez in search of him.”

“Alone, or to attack the city with ships?”

“Dear, I could have done nothing alone, and an army would scarcely have taken Fez. The Sultan at that time was menaced by his own people; I offered our aid in crushing the rebellion in exchange for the liberty of Don Luís. The offer was accepted, and so I saw the gardens of Fez.”

Through the quiet statement Floria caught a glimpse of Eastern war, the glitter of steel and gold, the flying horses bearing warriors gorgeous in silk and gems.

“And––you won?” she demanded eagerly.

Estevan smiled.

“Could we lose, querida mia?”

“Not when you fought for Don Luís––I understand.”

There was a little pause; then she added, with reproach for the absent Lucena

“After that, he could believe this thing of you, Estevan?”

Estevan winced, with the old jealous dread of hearing Lucena’s name coupled with a fault.

“You must not blame him; he believed no charge against me except my own,” he answered a little hurriedly. “And what I did at Fez was so small a thread in the woven stress of war and sea that made our lives. Don Luís has risked more for me, and I for him. We never kept petty account of what we owed each other of life or success. Floria, if you trust me, you must trust him also.”

“I meant to keep dark thoughts from you, and instead I have brought them,” she murmured plaintively.

“Love of mine, I have only one dark thought to-night, and that is fear for you.”

“Then send it away, Estevan. I would have gone from here to a convent on my father’s return; can worse happen to me now? And I shall be happy all my life, knowing that you care for me.”

Leaning down, she reached her hand to him, and he clasped it firmly in his own.

“You will go home to the Quinta, Estevan? You will not wander all night in the lonely forest?”

“I will go to the Quinta, if you wish it, lady and princess.”

“The moonlight is too weak. If I could see into your eyes, I am afraid there would be no laughter, Estevan.”

“Floria, mia, do the happiest laugh?”

“Then you will believe in our happiness, as I do, indeed?”

“Yes,” he lied steadily.

She breathed a sigh of profound content and slipped her hand from his.

“Good night––” She paused as the faint peal of a bell floated up from the village, then laughed softly. “Ave Maria purísima! Las doce, y todo es sereno! Good night.”

Estevan caught his breath, and the hand that fell to his side clenched.

“Good night,” he said very quietly. “Floria, mia, God have you in His keeping.”

The quaintly solemn phrase of farewell was all earnest on his lips, yet fell so lightly as not to shake her airily built fancies. Her half questioning glance was met by the smile whose exquisite tenderness had been learned in the ordeal by the fire.

The strange calm of the night remained unchanged by the new day. Not a ripple dimpled the sea; not a leaf moved on Rocaverde. Floria, coming out and surveying the shining water, shaded her eyes from its glare.

“The Mediterranean has changed to Abderaman’s fountain of quicksilver,” she commented whimsically.

Some one rose swiftly from one of the courtyard benches and crossed to her side.

“Señorita,” said Juan.

Floria turned, with an exclamation of surprise.

“You, Juanito? You have come back so early?”

“I did not go home,” he retorted accusingly. “Señorita, I saw you last night with El Sonriente. You love him––him!”

Floria’s clear eyes met his without shrinking, although the carnation deepened on cheek and lip.

“You knew that already, before I myself,” she answered.

Floria regarded the round boyish face in its new fatigue and distress, her own expression full of wondering pity.

“Juan, there is no danger to Don Estevan––no menace but that which grows less each day. What do you fear?”

His answer was indirect.

“Señorita––señorita, what stones are you building in your palace? You warned me; will you give yourself to one who has forgotten all that should be remembered?”

“No, but to one whose honor has led him in paths we cannot see,” she replied proudly. “I trust Don Estevan.”

“You mean that he can explain? He has told you––”

“Nothing. I did not as. Juanito, do not scold me. I am too happy this morning.”

“Señorita! Happy? Look.”

She followed the direction of his outstretched hand, and saw four threadlike lines that rose dark where glistening sky and water met. Juan answered her inquiring glance, his voice a little lowered.

“The ships, señorita. My lord is coming home.”

“You are afraid?” asked Floria seriously. “Why, now––after so long? What do you dread from Don Luís, Juan?”

He raised his dark face to hers, and found no reply.

“While the calm lats, they cannot come in,” he said presently.

They stood in silence until Floria was called to the house.

When she returned, half an hour later, Juan was sitting on the bench, his chin in his hands.

“You will not follow me?” she said, between entreaty and command.

“It would be better not to go,” he answered dully. “But I will wait, señorita.”

Under the dense trees it was cool, and the sun fell only in checkered patches. Floria touched the drooping branches caressingly as she passed, loving the least flower of this Rocaverde where she had found Estevan.

“I know now what Selim felt when he saw Alenya of the Sea,” she reflected. “Only I was not sorrowful. I could tell Don Luís that story better now.”

The foreboding felt by Estevan and Juan affected her not at all; indeed, of the first she was hardly conscious, so well had her lover obeyed her wish for one untroubled night. And she had youth’s incredulity of grief, with a profound faith in Lucena’s ultimate release of his cousin.

But when she reached the pool in the forest, Estevan was not there. Surprised and puzzled, she gazed down the avenues of trees. That it was still early was an explanation that did not satisfy; she knew quite well that he would not have permitted her to wait for him

She stood for a moment, listening for his step, and suddenly caught the sound of distant voices. After a brief hesitation, she turned in that direction.

The subdued murmur grew more distinct as she advanced, and an abrupt turn to avoid some bushes brought her to a standstill, her eyes dilating. At her feet the ground fell away in one of those deep chasms with which the mountainside abounded; and on the opposite side, not twenty-five feet from her, were Estevan and Pedro Mirando.

Neither had heard her light footfall, and Floria drew back among the trees, with instinctive avoidance of the stranger’s hard, angry eyes. Mirando was speaking excitedly; Estevan listened, his fair tranquil face thrown into high relief by the dark richness of his dress, and by the still darker background of the huge tree-trunk against which he leaned.

“Señor, I tell you, his ships are at this moment in sight,” the other insisted. “Will you stay here until he carries out the plan that has been growing, all these months, in his deliberate, unforgetting hate? Will you wait for that?”

“I answered that question once,” Estevan replied. “This is my hour, Señor Mirando; it is a great pleasure to me to see your agitation.”

“You mean to tell him––”

“You have my promise.”

“Then you are defenseless?”

“Yes. But that does not seem to console you.”

Mirando hesitated.

“Señor, is life to be so carelessly tossed away––the life that holds youth and strength, fame, and wealth? Grant the gates of Europe closed––as they are not––are there not other countries? Five years ago, when you delivered my lord from his prison in Fez, I fought under you.”

“You were a good officer then, Mirando.”

“Señor, I would serve you as well again, if you chose. I knew––all the men knew, and half Morocco––that the Sultan offered everything to induce you to stay with him and govern his city, after all was over. You refused, but I know the Sultan gave you a written promise that the offer was still yours, on any day you might come to claim it. Señor, that is a life that even a Lucena might stoop to gather––life in the city of palaces––life gorgeous, many tinted, quivering with the excitement and passion of Africa. It would be a command almost absolute, in the land where days and nights are streaked with fire. Would war be less war because your soldiers shouted ‘Allah!’ instead of ‘Santiago!’––because the banner that followed your orders did not bear my lord’s crested wave pierced with the golden sword?”

“You are poetic, Señor Mirando. Unfortunately, I can listen no longer; even a prisoner’s time is sometimes of importance.”

The man met the ironic smile, and his expression changed.

“You refuse, señor?”

“Did you imagine I should do anything else?” inquired Estevan.

“Then give me the paper and I will go!” exclaimed Mirando. “Señor, give me the Sultan’s letter, and I leave you free to tell my lord all! I would have escaped from this island long ago; but I have lived in this way too many years to go forth a beggar, a soldier of fortune. I will be frank, Don Estevan. If I could have found the paper in your rooms––and I have searched––my lord would have seen me no more. Give me Fez in exchange for Rocaverde––send me to the Sultan with your recommendation––and I give you back your promise!”

Only dimly comprehending the significance of the offer, Floria yet guessed enough to wait breathlessly for Estevan’s answer. But the young noble remained unmoved before the eager attack.

“You deepen my veneration for you, Señor Mirando,” he said, with perfect calmness. “You would save yourself at the expense of your companions, then? You forget that you were only one of the men to whom I gave my word; bring me the others; and if you are all agreed, I will gladly buy my liberty. If that is all you have to say, I suggest that you return to the castle.”

The bitter disappointment that filled Mirando’s narrow eyes was accompanied by something more dangerous.

“You refuse peace, señor?” he replied, struggling with his rage. “Suppose the old threat still holds––suppose death watches for my lord now, as before?”

“I suppose nothing so absurd,” Estevan retorted. “I am not a helpless captive this time; and if there is new treachery, I am not forced to conceal it. Don Luís shall be warned as he steps on the wharf, though I do it myself. And have no doubt but that he will believe me, Señor Mirando.”

Mirando’s flush died out.

“So, Don Estevan––and there is no one you care to protect, except my lord?” he demanded.

“Which means––”

“Which means that the choice is before you again, señor. The dark-eyed Castilian who visits you here in the forest––has she nothing to lose? Either go yourself to Fez, or send me to the Sultan before the calm-bound ships come in. If not, Doña Floria’s romantic adventure will be the gossip of castle and village.”

Floria sank against the nearest tree, her horrified eyes on Estevan––Estevan, whose face grew strangely cool and still.

“No,” he said, in a voice of silk and gold. “No; you will not do that, Señor Mirando––because I am going to kill you.”

The man stared at him, then cast a rapid glance around; but Estevan was before him, and the precipice behind. Floria understood, and put her hands over her eyes, shuddering.

When she looked up the two men were fighting––the slipping of steel over steel the only sound. And for the first time she saw El Sonriente glad with the brilliant gaiety, the joy of action and daring, the zest of the only game. This was the Estevan whom Lucena and Juan had known.

The duel progressed in silence, the swaying grace of the combatants masking the deadliness of their intent. It was difficult to realize that each silvery tinkly of steel marked the stopping of an attempted death. But slowly the laughter deepened in the blue eyes, and the black grew fiercely malevolent.

“If Don Luís wills,” murmured Estevan softly; “but you precede me, dear señor.”

Mirando had no time for speech; it was a defense and not a battle now. Trembling with horror and pity, Floria had already veiled her eyes, when something sprang rustling through the underbrush toward the two men. Estevan caught the noise, and called out sharply.

“Down, Taric! Down! Down!”

The dog crouched, growling; but for the single instant Estevan’s eyes left those of his opponent. Mirando’s cry of triumph mingled with Floria’s scream, and as Estevan fell the great hound leaped. Mirando saw––too late––and man and dog toppled backward together over the forgotten precipice

The stillness that succeeded was absolute. Tearless, voiceless, Floria turned and sped back to where the chasm ended in the mountain’s slope. The bushes grasped at her with detaining fingers; trailing vines rose, netlike, under her flying feet; once a vivid snake glided aside unheeded.

Estevan was unconscious when she reached his side, the spreading stain over his heart dying the silk and velvet a sinister crimson. In passing the little brook, Floria had dipped her scarf; and now she knelt and pressed the cool wet gauze to his temples, pushing back the thick waves of fair hair with gentle fingers. But, as the simple efforts failed one by one, her self-control deserted her.

“Estevan! Estevan!” she cried, breaking into a passion of sobs. “I am afraid, I am afraid!”

She bent her head until her cheek touched his.

“Estevan! Estevan!” she repeated, not knowing that she spoke at all.

The appeal in the beloved voice––the insistent call––dragged back the reluctant consciousness from its repose. Very slowly Estevan’s lashes were lifted, and he looked into Floria’s wet eyes.

“Dear––” he murmured with infinite tenderness and pity.

Floria gave a low cry, and joy flashed into her face with a radiance of visible light, sweeping back the beauty of color and tint.

“I thought you were dead!” she exclaimed tremulously.

The sorrow deepened in his earnest eyes.

“That were best, dear love,” he said.

“Estevan!” she protested, in shocked reproach.

“Aye, best. Floria, you do not know. I thought of it all––last night.” He spoke in little pauses, his dark brows contracting painfully. “Dear, I have been very selfish. Mirando––”

“Taric carried him down the cliff,” she answered, shivering.

“I know. But he was right; you must go before anyone finds you here. Never let them suspect you have met me. Go, before the ships come in, Floria!”

“And leave you alone?”

“Alone––is that new? Floria, Floria, how I have wanted Don Luís!”

The involuntary cry startled them both. Before its revelation of suffering, Floria found no words; to Estevan it brought realization of his ebbing strength.

“Leone will find me,” he added, almost at once. “I ask you to go––Floria mia!”

“I cannot,” she said, in distress. “Estevan, do not send me away. I am coming to the Quinta to take care of you. If we are together––if you live––does it matter what people say?”

With difficulty he turned his head and kissed the small hand on his shoulder.

“Dear, you have brought me a happiness that makes all else easy; leave it to me, free from the grief of having injured you.”

Still she hesitated, and he continued gently:

“There is no one in Rocaverde who would obey a wish of mine. Will you, too, refuse me?”

The tears rushed to Floria’s eyes. Stooping, she touched her lips to his; then rose and fled across the forest.

“With her swift movement, a knot of rose-colored ribbon fluttered from her dress and settled lightly on the ground. Estevan, gazing after her, saw the gleam of color, and forced back the creeping faintness. If someone came before Leone, or if he did not notice the telltale bit of silk, would there not be a question of who wore such things here?

Slowly, with painful effort and exertion, he dragged himself toward the rosy spot that wavered before his eyes and seemed to retreat as he advanced.

When at last Leone Valdi and two servants arrived from the Quinta, they found Estevan lying in a heavy stupor, his right hand outstretched, and so tightly clenched that they could not discover what it held.

Still sitting, chin in hand, Juan watched the slight figure coming up the slope from the forest; then turned to look at the spider-web tracery of spars against the sun. He shared Valdi’s lack of faith in Lucena’s consideration for his own class and blood, and he firmly believed that the tortoise-like ships brought Estevan’s sentence.

“When my lord waits!” he repeated, with ominous recollection; and forgot to move, until Floria’s step sounded beside him.

If he did not cry out on seeing her, it was because his stupefaction passed such expression. The soft dark eyes were black with strong feeling; her delicate face bore an unfamiliar wanness, an incredulous pain and grief. As she let fall the gathered folds of her dress, he saw it was stained and torn by brambles; and the little shoes showed signs of heedless walking in the woods.

“Señorita!” he gasped.

She looked at him steadfastly.

“You will go to the castle, Juan,” she directed clearly; “and tell Don Ruy de la Vega that Don Estevan is wounded and must have aid at once! Tell also Doña Soledad, and Doña Arria.”

“Señorita––”

“And to the last say also that I am Don Estevan’s promised wife; and that I ask them to come to the Quinta, so that I may be with dignity at his side. He has bidden me stay here; without them, I cannot go.”

“Señorita! What has happened?”

“Mirando tried to kill him. They fought together. Juan, it is too long to tell you––go!”

He caught her hand and gently drew her down on the bench, his own eyes blazing with excitement.

“Señorita! Por Dios! You are ill––you have not thought! Where is Mirando?”

“He is dead. Taric bore him over the precipice when Don Estevan was wounded. There is no one to care for him at the Quinta, Juan. Go now!”

“To carry that message? Señorita, I dare not.”

“Then I will go myself.”

“Oh!”

They looked at each other, and the boy yielded first.

“I will go––I will go. But Don Estevan is disgraced, outlawed; you will not call yourself his. Señorita, think what it means to you. I will bring help, but do you keep silence. And if it ends now, he will escape my lord, at least.”

“If Don Estevan lives, I will go to him; if he does not, I will enter the convent,” she answered wearily. “Juan, do not think of me; only go. There is nothing to fear. When Don Luís comes it will not be you he will consider.”

Juan flushed all over.

“I am not afraid,” he protested hotly. “Señorita, I am coming back. I can help you; I will bring news from the Quinta. I––I love you, señorita.”

He touched her hand and turned to the long, glaring road.

After a while, Floria rose and went to her room. She had herself found Valdi and sent him to Estevan’s aid; there was nothing to do now but wait for Juan’s return.

The place seemed strangely empty of all that had filled it the evening before. With the moonlight had vanished the things which, scarcely more substantial, yet left the reality dull and faded without them. Through the window the sunlight streamed, hard, and intolerably bright; by it Floria lingered a moment, gazing earnestly and wistfully at the unmoving lines that marked Lucena’s ships against the horizon.

The hours passed with clinging reluctance; the long day seemed to grudge each minute that slipped from its grasp. Once the Señora Paz came up to her guest, and was dismayed into bustling care of her. Floria submitted without objection, and dismissed her as soon as possible, under pretext of wishing to sleep. But when she closed her eyes it was only to meet Estevan’s caressing glance, or to see Mirando’s face as the ground gave way under his heel.

It was night when Juan came back, tired and pale beneath the dust of the sun-baked roads. In the dusky room Floria rose to receive him, her white robes making her distinct among the shadows.

“Juan?”

“I told them,” he said, standing grimly before her. “And they will do nothing until my lord is here. Nothing, señorita! I even went to the Arab doctor himself, whom Don Estevan saved from a sinking ship and brought here to live in peace, and he was afraid to come. My lord forbade that any one should visit the Quinta. Madre de Dios! The señoras––Doña Arria sat untroubled, and looked at me from Don Estevan’s eyes; Doña Soledad said my lord should bring you prisoner to the castle until your father came. Señorita, I hate everyone in the world but you!”

“And Don Luís,” answered Floria, with the quietness of exhaustion. “Juan, pray that he come in time.”

“Señorita, you believe he will help––”

“I know it. What they are doing at the castle he will never forgive.”

Juan strove to see her face through the darkness, convinced, in spite of his prejudice against Lucena.

“Perhaps. He loved him, señorita. But there is no wind.”

They turned together and gazed at the unruffled sea, on whose smooth surface the stars began to cast tiny paths of light.

“I will go to the Quinta,” he added presently. In the morning I will bring you news, señorita. It may be good news; remember, we do not know.”

“Yes, I will remember that,” she responded simply. “You are very kind to me, Juan.”

As the day had dragged its minutes into hours, so did the night. Floria, kneeling at the open window, fell asleep at last with her arms resting on the broad sill. The placid household had long retired.

The jingling of little bells broke in upon her uneasy slumber and startled her alertly awake. The moon had risen hours since, and in the bright light she saw a solitary rider coming up the road. Floria leaned forward, recognizing the figure with incredulous joy, then sprang up and sped noiselessly through the house and out of the door.

The rider had stopped his steed for a brief recuperation from the steep ascent, and the young girl reached him easily.

“Padre Jacinto!” she panted. “You are going to him?”

“My child, my child!” the good padre remonstrated helplessly, as she leaned against him and hid her eyes on his knee. “My dear, hush! You distress me.”

“I am not crying now. You are going there, padre?”

He laid his hand on the soft dark curls.

“My child, it is not for me––nor, indeed, for those in the castle––to judge Don Estevan. I have some skill in such cases as his, and I go to give what aid I can.”

“Take me with you, padre mio!”

“Floria!”

She lifted her sweet, resolute face to him.

“Padre, we met each other, Estevan and I; could we help caring? I am to be his wife––take me to him. All Rocaverde has heard already; and if I am with you, it cannot be wrong.”

Padre Jacinto was wise in experience, and he knew Estevan de Lucena.

“Did Don Estevan wish you to go to the Quinta?” he asked.

“No,” confessed Floria truthfully. “But he thinks only of protecting me, not of himself. He wanted me to keep silence altogether––to leave him there in the forest until Leone Valdi chanced to find him. Could I have done that? And now I cannot do this other––to stay here while he is suffering, perhaps while he is asking for me. Padre, suppose even that I should never hear his voice again!”

“My child, let us trust it is not so grave as that,” he answered, his own voice ill assured. “We must first think of Don Estevan; would it be well for him to learn that you were in the Quinta? You say rightly, it is of you he will ask––it is you he will strive to shield; leave me the power to tell him you are in safety. For the rest”––he hesitated, but the large, appealing eyes drew him on––“if you will remain here, daughter, I will promise to send for you, if Don Estevan asks it, or if he grows dangerously worse.”

“If he had done as Mirando urged we might have been together in Fez,” she said, with dreamy irrelevance. “I thought I wanted him to wait; but now all else would matter so little if he were well.”

Padre Jacinto contemplated her with some misgiving.

“Floria, you must go in and try to rest. You will do as Don Estevan and I wish––you will wait here?”

“If I must––until Don Luís comes,” she yielded. “And if you promise, padre.”

He climbed down from his mule to leader back to the door, reiterating assurances and encouragement. Floria reascended the stairs, a little comforted. There was something soothing in the very jingle of the mule-bells, as the wound died away in the forest paths. But when she obeyed the injunction to rest, it was by taking her post at the window once more; and when sleep again overtook her, the last waking glance was toward Lucena’s fleet.

That way also were turned the first glances of Rocaverde, next morning, as the red sun rolled up. From Ruy de la Vega, on the castle ramparts, to Emilia Diaz, in her cottage––all looked toward the tracery of masts and spars; then up at the mountain which lifted its barrier between them and the Quinta. For the first time in many months, Estevan’s name passed from mouth to mouth, and not unkindly. It helped him that Pedro Mirando had been disliked.

But Rosa Paredes voiced the general feeling in a criticism that contained all the insolence of youth and assured beauty, as she stood beside the fountain in the village square.

“So you are unreasonable, you of Rocaverde,” she announced in her caustic drawl, poising, hands on hips, with lithe gipsy grace. “If my lord had come home and sentenced’ Don Estevan to death, you would all have said: ‘It is well! Viva la justicia del señor.’ But because he is dying over there––because it was a duel––you are all pity. Bah! I will marry a sailor.”

Rocaverde flushed shamefacedly and tried to laugh, not finding a denial. Be it said to the credit of the island that no rough word was spoken of Floria, even the cynical Rosa having only admiration for the young Castilian who dared so much for Lucena’s prisoner. And with delicious perversity, they were bitterly angry with Juan Perez, as a Rocaverdean who supported one who had betrayed his lord.

Still, the calm remained unbroken, and more than ever the sea deserved the fanciful comparison with the Spanish Moor’s pool of quicksilver. Early in the morning, before the sun had risen high enough to make travel unendurable, a small cavalcade left the castle and commenced the ascent of the mountain. Seeing a woman’s fluttering garments, the village stared in speculative interest.

Floria heard the arrival of the visitors, as she heard every sound that came from house or forest. There had even been seconds when she fancied she could hear the wavering tide lap against the distant ships it failed to move. But she did not go down to meet Arria, standing quietly in the middle of the room.

Arria de Lucena was not easily disconcerted, but something in the attitude of the silent figure halted her on the threshold.

“Floria!” she exclaimed.

Floria said nothing; and Arria’s unusual flush rose, as she found herself on trial where she had come as judge.

“You are angry,” she said, with her cold frankness. “Why? Do you imagine I have not tried to send aid to Estevan, and failed––that I am not as powerless as you? Is it my fault that they are all cowards down there?”

“Then, you do care?” Floria asked gravely.

“Naturally. From the first, have I neglected any effort to save Estevan––have I not even sent away Don Luís because of him?”

Floria moved a quick step forward, swept by the last sentence into a sympathy measured by her own desolation.

“Forgive me!” she said, the shadow of a sob crossing her face. “I did not remember.”

They kissed each other, then sat down, hand in hand. Floria leaned her head against the high back of her chair, with a sigh of utter weariness; anxiety had given her a pathetic fragility that accentuated her real youth. Arria studied her, with guilty realization of her own mingled thoughts––thoughts which she dared not quite disentangle.

“Juan told me what Doña Soledad said,” Floria remarked, after a pause. “I did not expect you to come to me, Arria.”

“It is not you I blame,” answered Arria, deliberately. “Nor is it you that Don Luís will reproach, when he learns that Estevan has drawn you into his disgrace. You are starting to his defense, of course; you will hear no wrong of him; but he should have guarded you from this, Floria.”

“Arria, what you believe is not so,” declared Floria, putting her small, cold hand over the one she clasped. “Not only of me––although there, too, you wrong him; for I made him speak––but of that other. Estevan was never untrue to his cousin. I heard Mirando talking with him before they fought; though I could not understand all, it was Mirando who was afraid––Mirando who dreaded Don Luís. He wanted Estevan to keep some secret.”

“What secret?” demanded Arria.

“I could not tell; something of the plot which did not succeed. But it was Mirando who threatened Don Luís.”

“Yes; since the duel, it is not difficult to guess that Mirando was one of the men Don Luís sought. Floria, can you not see how this convicts, not clears, Estevan? Naturally, Mirando was afraid his share in the plan would be discovered; Estevan has nothing more to fear, since he confessed.”

Floria had never heard a true account of the scene that followed Gonsalvo’s escape, and she was not able to deny Estevan’s confession or limit its extent, but the faith in her soft eyes remained unshaken.

“I said I did not understand; I only know that Estevan could not have done that thing.”

“Did he tell you so?”

Floria hesitated, struggling for exact recollection.

“He said he would not tell me he was guilty, and that he would never defend himself.”

Arria smiled, between pity and scorn.

“It cost so little to convince you? Floria, Don Luís asked him only to say he was innocent––asked no proofs, no explanation––and Estevan could not. Oh, I, too, tried to refuse belief––until it was forced upon me!”

Floria drew away from her, shivering.

“If you are trying now to make me believe that story, you will fail,” she replied firmly. “I am tired. IT is hard to think; but when Don Luís comes, perhaps he will understand. Arria did you come here to take me to Estevan?”

“No,” retorted Arria.

“Then––”

“You want me to go. It was you I came to see; for no other reason would I have left the castle, at this time. Doña Soledad and I have quarreled over this visit; she is grieved for Estevan and shocked for you; I never felt less kindly toward him, and your courage is past all admiration. You have dared all I cannot. When Estevan is well, I believe you will go to him at the Quinta; I would not marry Don Luís, at the castle, while one whispering voice could attack me. You––whom I called a child, with your guitar and pretty tales!”

Surprised and half frightened, Floria looked at the lovely, stormy face.

“You think unkindly only of Estevan,” she said. “What I have done––what you call courage––is not so; because nothing matters except him.”

Again Arria colored before the clear, earnest eyes. Lucena had awakened one side of her nature into fierce response to his, and now Floria’s soft touch reached a dormant gentleness.

“I should like to help you,” she answered, groping uncertainly for expression.

Floria had the poet’s gift of ready comprehension, a magical insight that is only another form of sympathy; she understood, now, and smiled a little unsteadily.

“There is no one who can help save Don Luís. We can only wait. But I thank you for coming to me, Arria.”

They had both risen. Drawing the slight figure to her, Arria turned a long gaze on the ships. And never before had the violet eyes been so like Estevan’s.

If from the island the motionless ships appeared cruelly placid and indifferent, from the decks Rocaverde offered a vision of aggravating coolness and tranquillity. Between blazing sky and ocean, the ships were held in a heat that made the exposed quarters impossible and the interior scarcely better. The men had borne it with the indifference of health and success; but it was now the third day since the calm had anchored them in sight of home, and the restraint began to pass endurance.

On the Gaviota, they lay upon the decks in such shadow as they could find; even Lucena’s discipline was temporarily relaxed. The honor of forming one of his crew was eagerly sought; but, like many other honors, it was uneasily worn when attained.

In one corner a group were engaged in gambling away their lately won share of the cargo which made the Gaviota a veritable treasure-ship; in another spot of shade, half a dozen laughing faces bent over a miniature race-track, down which a pair of beetles ambled with charming slowness and obliquity. Francisco Diaz, his merry, audacious face tanned dark as the Moors he had recently fought, sat on an upturned bucket, and enlivened the monotony with his inseparable and primitive mandolin.

“Five leagues and more from Granada

  Heaves a bold bark upon the sea;

Good gold for many a man, ha-ha!

 And a Moorish trinket or two for me!”

“If Emilia heard that, she would say a crow had stolen your voice, Diaz!” jeered one of the gamblers. “Sixes, Manuel; you have lost the earrings!”

“If is the heat,” returned Diaz imperturbably. “I am thinking of the cool, full casks in my wife’s new storeroom.

“White wine! Red wine! White wine! Red wine!

Faith, I could drink it all!”

“A little louder, Francisco––only a little, and my lord will hear you!” suggested another.

“And then your heart will break to see me in trouble, my Felipe,” he retorted, lowering his tone, however. “Tell me, what did Rosa Paredes say when you kissed her for good-by?”

A broad smile went round the circle.

“Felipe will say a Moor gave him that scratch,” observed the young sailor who had danced with the girl on the evening before the voyage.

“The kiss was worth it; who else has had so much?” answered the recipient provocatively.

The eyes of the two rivals met with a significant glint, and Felipe half rose from his lounging position.

“Hola!” exclaimed Diaz warningly. “Señores, are we ashore?”

“If you do not know the answer to that, Francisco, the rest of us can tell you,” some one called dryly.

Diaz tilted his head against the rail.

“I know, I know; it is only at sea that I have to look at you every day, Valentino. Do you remember the affair when an unkind pagan cut off this cavalier’s ear, gentlemen? Santa Maria! Valentino roared like an Atlantic gale––and how he fought, that day! It seemed there would not be enough Moors in all Andalusia to satisfy his thirst for killing. The infidels might fill a book with the account of payments made on that ear. Is it settled yet, my son?”

“When I listen to you, I could wish the Moor had lopped off both ears, Francisco,” growled the other good-temperedly.

This time the laughter rang out heartily, Diaz joining in at his own expense.

“Forgive the pagan, Valentino; never could you have made such a jest without him!” he declared. ‘‘When I reflect that we never considered you witty! This heat––one suffocates! Once before we were becalmed like this––out beyond the great rock, on my first voyage What was that song you taught me?

“Oh, the sun never sets in the east, dear heart

Farewell, for the dawn is gone

Farewell! From me to my absent one––”

One of the men caught his arm savagely.

“Diaz! Where are you dreaming? To sing that––here!”

A silence of absolute consternation had fallen upon the groups, as they stared from the singer to the door beyond. After a long moment, Diaz laid the mandolin on the deck and rose, a little less ruddy than before.

“He did not hear,” he said, glancing around for confirmation.

“Felipe shrugged his shoulders expressively, and returned to the beetles.

But Lucena had heard, and the stifling luxury of the cabin where he said gave place to the dark, wet decks. The rush of wind through the cordage, the hiss of parting waves, came with the song; and in a halo of yellow lantern-light, a fair, laughing face bent above the wheel. It had been so like Estevan to choose that sentimental ballad for moments of especial stress, when only Lucena or he dared guide the reeling Gaviota, or when the battle wavered between defeat and victory.

But the illusion faded as quickly as it had come, and the cabin closed again––the cabin whose gem-like gorgeousness had never been the work of the ascetic Lucena, and which was stamped with the marks of dual occupation, from its twin divans to the jade and ivory chessmen on the high-rimmed shelf.

Lucena knew quite well that only forgetfulness would have brought that song within his hearing; knew, also, the reason for the sudden break and hush; and his pride winced before the certainty that these others divined what passed here in his solitude. He turned and gazed through the oval window at Rocaverde, a soft emerald cone against the bright sea. Estevan's heaviest hours were less difficult than those which came to Lucena, for he understood.

By and by there was a movement outside, a murmur of excitement that reached even the cabin. From one of the other ships came a ringing shout. Rapid footsteps crossed the passage, and some one knocked. Lucena gave the desired permission curtly; he was sufficiently weary and irritable to dislike the officer who attended, merely because he took Estevan’s place.

But the man who appeared on the threshold was too overjoyed for close observation.

“My lord, a breeze is coming; the calm has broken!” he announced breathlessly.

“You fancied it eternal?” inquired Lucena, rising composedly. “Pray open the door, Mendoza.”

The officer obeyed, and followed quietly, watching his chief with the relieved reflection that in a few hours he would no longer be under the direct surveillance of those gray eyes.

To-day, not even Lucena’s presence could lessen the joyous abandon with which the men flung themselves into the preparations to meet the dark line which came sweeping steadily down toward them. They were going home; and they worked cheerfully under the heat which an hour before they had found intolerable in their shaded corners. Diaz, once more fired by the vision of the new cottage and Emilia’s welcoming face, broke into a gay snatch of song; then checked himself, with an apprehensive glance at the forward deck.

And again Lucena heard, feigning deafness. So perverse is memory––so difficult it is for the most tactful to tell which pressure soothes and which distresses––that he felt almost gratitude to Diaz for the song so carelessly chanced upon, and only pride kept him from ordering it repeated.

But the snapped verse rang insistently through his mind, and set itself to every sound of creak or ripple, as he watched Rocaverde rise higher and become distinct in form and color as they approached.

“From me, my absent one––” That was what Arria demanded––that he should separate himself more completely from Estevan. A slight smile touched his lips; he was not coming home to submit to conditions or dictation. Yet, remembering Padre Jacinto’s warning, he reluctantly acknowledged the decision that might be forced upon him, and regarded the island curiously.

The wind had brought a little relief from the heat; but when the ships dropped anchor at noon, the very ropes scorched the fingers that grasped them. As Lucena passed to the small boat, he caught Diaz, with ardent gaze, searching the bright crowd that filled the wharf.

“You are of the crew, Diaz,” he said briefly, and saw the swarthy young face flush with surprise and pleasure as its owner sprang down the ladder.

Felipe, already in the boat, seized an instant when Lucena’s head was turned away, and smiled mockingly up at his rival on the deck above. In the glance and the furious gesture which carried the other’s hand to his belt, a challenge was given and accepted.

As always, the village had poured forth in greeting. Ruy de la Vega and the glittering train from the castle waited on the pier, and Rocaverde flaunted all its insolent prosperity in deference to its lord. Of what was happening across the mountain there was here no sign. But, to a ruler of men, nothing is more obvious than when his many-stringed instrument is out of tune; Lucena had not returned Don Ruy’s salute before he knew that something was wrong.

Once before he had met this change in the care-free atmosphere of Rocaverde––this chill apprehension, while men avoided his eyes and left unspoken the thought uppermost in their minds. By that occasion he interpreted this, and imagined that he knew the explanation. As he received the reins of his horse from Don Bernardo, he noted, as confirmation of the opinion, the young officer’s pallor and uneasiness. This place had usually been taken by Pedro Mirando, and the substitution did not please Lucena.

“Where is Mirando?” he questioned, glancing over the groups.

Don Bernardo was a native Rocaverdean, and evasion of the disagreeable query did not even occur to him.

“My lord, he is dead,” he answered promptly, if unwillingly.

Lucena lifted his brows in some surprise, but inquired no further. It was sufficient that the man was not there to serve him.

With the clatter of the last departing rider, the wharf broke into joyous tumult. Emilia Diaz was already in her husband’s arms; as the second boat came in from the Gaviota, Rosa Paredes stepped coolly from the crowd and walked into the embrace of the one-eared Valentino. There was a stupefied pause among the witnesses; then an outburst of mirth and applause.

The man on the dock and the man in the boat looked at each other; then Alberto tossed his knife viciously into the sea, and Felipe bent to offer his assisting hand for the landing.

In the great arched hall of the castle, where the glowing walls and tinted columns had set the scene for the drama of many a Lucena before this last Don Luís, he turned upon Ruy de la Vega, as he had once demanded an account of a dearer governor.

“Well, Don Ruy?” he asked imperiously. “What now?”

The old man faltered as he encountered the clear, hard glance.

“My lord, I––”

“Go on!”

“My lord, pardon; the señora can tell it better than I.”

“It is not in Doña Soledad’s charge that I left Rocaverde, but in yours.”

“My lord, I return the island as it was left with me,” he answered, not without dignity. “What the señora has consented to tell is––different.”

Lucena’s lips set in the old unpleasant curve.

“I can guess, De la Vega. You were ready enough to accuse Don Estevan before; this new consideration is a little out of place. However––Doña Soledad knows of my arrival?”

“Yes, my lord.”

Lucena turned away, and took the direction of the east wing. That Estevan had attempted a second rebellion he did not doubt; nor that Arria would make a second effort to save him, by the old method. And Lucena’s mood had never been so dangerous; the reaction had come, and he crossed the single step that lay between the grief of an hour before and anger as bitter.

In the upper hall he paused for an instant; then deliberately chose the route through the violet room. If Ruy de la Vega had been forced to bring Estevan to the castle, he would probably be here; if not––it was simply the shortest way to Doña Soledad’s apartments. But the room was empty, and there could have been no greater evidence of the change in Lucena than his passing unmoved through the eloquent place.

His visit was already anticipated in the east wing. One of the attendants opened the door, and went out after admitting him. Lucena looked across the shaded room, and saw his mother seated in her armchair on the dais, quite alone. For the first time in his recollection the rows of demure women had been dismissed.

Doña Soledad was not a skilled student of character, but she augured no good from Lucena’s expression as he bent his head to her hand.

“Don Ruy has told you?” she asked.

“He sent me to you. Apparently the news that awaits me is not amusing to tell. I regret that you have been troubled to assume this task, señora; for I can answer you that it will make no difference whether the story is told me by you or by Don Ruy, or by anyone else in Rocaverde. It is Estevan again?”

Doña Soledad folded her hands in her lap, latent hostility toward her son jarred into active dislike for the moment.

“Estevan is dying,” she stated in her thin, precise voice.

To the physically strong, a shock comes with no cessation of consciousness––no relief in outcry. Lucena said nothing. His mother, knowing the race, cast down her eyes and waited in perfect silence. A bee blundered in at a window and circled the room, its baffled hum rising and falling through the stillness. Presently it found the opening again, and rushed tempestuously out, the sound dying away across the garden.

“What has happened?” asked Lucena at last.

“He fought a duel with Pedro Mirando––no one knows why. Of course, they must have had some secret understanding together, or Mirando would not have gone there. Evidently they quarreled, and Mirando was killed. Juan Perez brought the news two days ago, in the form of a message from Doña Floria.” She stole a glance at the gray, impassive face and compressed her lips.

“You will be very much displeased, Luís, but I warned you not to leave the girl up there alone. She publicly sent word that she was betrothed to Estevan––I suppose they met in the woods, since you did not confine either––and demanded that Arria and I should go to the Quinta, bringing the physician.”

“Rocaverde does me honor; I am not an officer of the Inquisition,” he replied, in his low, bitter tone. “If he was wounded, every assistance should have been sent at once. Señora, I shall long be grateful to you and Ruy de la Vega. Arria is at the Quinta?”

“Arria is in the garden,” responded Doña Soledad. “Pray remember, Luís, that you and yours have trained Rocaverde, and that the result is your own also.”

Lucena might have retorted, with truth, that useless cruelty was not a trait of his house; but the reproach passed unheeded, almost unheard. He turned and went out to the sloping terraces. Doña Soledad looked after him with feelings of mingled relief and repugnance.

“And we were afraid to tell him!” she commented mentally. “I used to believe he loved Estevan, at least.”

But the girl who rose at his approach and stood waiting beneath the almond tree was too much like him not to read better the composure a little too well maintained, which Doña Soledad had failed to understand.

There were no conventional greetings; opposite her Lucena stopped, and they looked at each other.

“Why are you here?” he demanded abruptly. “You are self-willed enough to follow your own path in my absence. Why have you not gone to him?”

Arria’s violet eyes faced his.

“Because you wished me to stay here,” she answered, with her cool, slow voice at variance with the betraying color that deepened steadily.

“I? Since when have you begun to obey me?”

“Perhaps since Floria taught me her way.”

Some of Lucena’s difficult self-control slipped from him.

“Doña Floria has nothing to do with us, my cousin. Or are you about to tell me that you and she believed, with the rest of Rocaverde, that I wished Estevan to die of neglect––that I am capable of such brutality?”

“I do you no such wrong, and Floria watches for you as her one hope,” she answered. “What she has taught me is humility. She loves Estevan, and has declared it to the whole island. He is disgraced––a prisoner––dying––unable even to give her his dishonored name; yet she asks only to go to him. This is the dainty child you laughed at the idea of loving. I know myself too proud, or too weak, ever to do what she has done. But you will lead me in no such paths. Luís, you asked me to be your wife; do you realize that there will soon be no obstacle between us, and through no fault of ours?”

The cry that broke from Lucena’s lips was more of wrath than of love; the last barrier of restraint crumbled and went down.

“And you think I will step to happiness across Estevan’s grave? That I will bear to see in your face the reflection of the other whose death is exchanged for it? Arria, you shall be my wife while he lives or never. By God’s blood! I have kept him here for this––to die untended and deserted in his suffering! Come!”

The storm she had evoked, the movement that followed, were too violent and sudden for Arria to protest. Lucena flung his arm around her waist and bore her to the castle, with the swift ease of one leading a little child.

“Send for Padre Jacinto!” he ordered the stupefied Doña Soledad.

“Then the strange priest I brought home on the Aguila. Tell De la Vega. Lose not a moment.”

Giddy, half fainting for the first time in her healthy young life, Arria rested unresistingly in Lucena’s grasp, leaning against the dominant arm that held her. She was vaguely cognizant of the waiting-women, who had returned and now sat aghast in their places; she heard Doña Soledad’s shocked questions, and the curt reply. The struggle she had predicted to Floria had come––and passed.

There was a slight commotion at the door, and a stranger in black was standing before her; Doña Soledad and the others had risen. Lucena gently released her, studying her with keen eyes; he knew quite well that she would make the necessary responses.

When it was over he kissed her, and the last antagonism between them shriveled and fell away.

“I am going to the Quinta,” he said quietly. “Do you wish to come with me, my wife?”

“Yes,” she answered, as quietly.

The great hall was very still as Lucena and Arria came down the wide stairs––the stairs up which the Lady Rosamond used to toil, with the two golden-haired children at her side. The rumor of what was passing in Doña Soledad’s rooms had spread rapidly through the building, and there was not one of those who rose at the master’s approach who did not know that the girl beside him was now doubly a Lucena.

Arria walked in regal indifference to the many curious eyes that were bent upon her. She did not even draw closer the sheltering folds of lace that draped her small head; her hand, in its miniature gauntlet of perfumed leather, was steadier than the arm on which it rested.

At the foot of the stairs Lucena paused, his glance traveling deliberately over the waiting hall. Ruy de la Vega moved forward expectantly, but stopped as Miguel Faria received the gesture of summons.

Lucena’s clear directions were soon given, and those who overheard listened with dawning consciousness of a mistake made. Not until he had finished speaking did Lucena look fully at his former governor, with that concentrated and blighting intensity of wrath which no dark eyes ever attain.

“When I return, we shall have much to discuss, De la Vega. And pray reflect that, if I desired my cousin to die, I stood in no need of your assistance.”

Arria’s faint, cold smile gleamed across her face as they passed on; she had predicted this to Don Ruy, and had been overruled.

The order for horses had been hurriedly obeyed. An attendant led up Arria’s mount as they appeared; but Lucena’s superb bay stood as he had left it on his arrival, with Bernardo d’Allariz still at its head. The young officer lifted eyes at once confident and apologetic to his chief’s questioning gaze.

“My lord, I kept Alado here,” he explained. “I knew––I thought he might be needed in haste.”

Lucena surveyed him calmly.

“Very well,” he answered. “You may come with us, Don Bernardo.”

Arria comprehended––as Bernardo could not––that Lucena would never forget the one man in Rocaverde who had not doubted his rescue of Estevan, and a sudden fear seized her. When he set her in the saddle, she detained him.

“Luís, I have thought so long of Estevan as my disgrace and the bar between us two, that I––have grown cruel. You were right; I never knew him as you did. But I do care, Luís.”

The gray eyes and the violet met; and, as once in Doña Soledad’s garden, the veils fell apart. Looking, Arria saw a grief which even she could never heal, a sorrow unspeakable. Lucena laid his hand on hers, and in the bond thus knit between them was their true marriage.

Alone except for the serious Bernardo, they wound silently up the tortuous ascent. The echoes of the glad and excited village were left behind; the breath of pines stole down the glaring road to meet them. And ever before Lucena went the solitary turning figure which had traveled that way––so many months ago.

On the summit, Lucena stopped before the De la Vega house and dismounted.

“You are going in there?” asked Arria. Involuntarily she looked up at the rose-framed window. It was empty.

“I am going to get Doña Floria,” he replied. “She has the right to go with us.”

Señora Paz came out at the sound of the horses, and stared in tremulous astonishment as she found Lucena before her.

“Señora, I have come for Doña Floria,” he said briefly.

“My lord, she has watched for you day and night,” answered the old lady, with regret. “But, half an hour ago, little Juan Perez came to her, and they went to the forest together. I am sorry––”

Lucena has gone to the Quinta,” he stated.

Arria started and paled.

“Already! She told me that Padre Jacinto had promised to send for her if Estevan grew worse. Luís, you are not angry with her? She did not know––she would credit no wrong of him!”

He lifted to her a face that was colorless even under the tropic sun.

“Never tell her otherwise! I wish that he had deceived me, also––that he had let me hang Gomez and never know the truth!”

No one save his wife could have drawn that confession of weakness from Luís de Lucena; even for her, it was not meet to reply. He turned away immediately and they went on.

The long afternoon shadows were falling when they reached the Quinta; in the gorge, the rising tide moaned and chafed. The dark, neglected building was very quiet as they dismounted before the moss-grown steps––so quiet that Don Bernardo received the reins without venturing a question as to the disposition of the tired animals.

Lucena paused for an instant at the foot of the entrance flight and looked up, as though expecting to meet some familiar welcome. He shuddered slightly and continued the ascent. To Arria, the place was quite unknown; Lucena’s description, given in that distant sunset, came vaguely back to her. Different, indeed, was this somber desolation from the brilliant, animated castle.

The entrance-hall ran all across the building, and opened both to the north and south. As they passed in, some one arose from a seat and came forward, stopping abruptly at sight of them.

“You, my son!” exclaimed Padre Jacinto. “I did not expect––”

“Why not?” demanded Lucena harshly. “Where should I be, if not here?”

The other shook his head deprecatingly.

Arria gave a faint cry.

“He is dead?” asked Lucena, with a self-control that brought physical pain as its price.

“No, no!” corrected Padre Jacinto hastily. “Not––” He glanced at Arria, and left the phrase unfinished. “I meant not that, my son; but––he was delirious, then. If you could have been there it might have changed much.”

“He asked for me?”

The old man sighed.

“He thinks little of any one else But now, he is unconscious.”

The door at the opposite end of the hall swung back.

“Animo, señorita!” said a boyish voice, trembling with excitement and sympathy. “You will rest a moment––only a moment!”

“Not yet, not here, Juanito,” came in the soft Castilian accents which had lingered in Lucena’s memory as a spoken gladness, the ripple of a sunny brook.

Juan held open the door, seeing nothing save the girl, who followed wearily. The others made no movement, but Floria looked across and saw Lucena’s tall and stately figure as he stood in the light cast through the window.

“Señor!” she cried. “Señor!” she held out her hands to him like a tired child.

Lucena sprang forward and took the little hands gently in his, unable for a moment to answer. The great, dark eyes met his––not with Arria’s fearless equality, but in all trustfulness and hope.

“You will save him now,” she said. “Señor, it was so long before you came!”

Lucena drew a quick breath, and his level brows contracted; as Estevan had once surrendered to Floria, so now did Luís.

“If I can save him yet, he shall be free. Ask his life of the Master, Doña Floria; if he recovers, he may take you to what land he will. And what has passed no Rocaverdean shall repeat, while I live.”

Only Arria knew the cost of that answer; only Lucena understood the movement which brought her a step toward him, as impulsively as Floria herself would have come.

Padre Jacinto looked from one to the other, and laid his hand on a door.

“The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord!” he quoted gravely as he opened the door.

The room they entered was large, and furnished with a faded magnificence more pathetic than any poverty. No one had lived in the Quinta since Estevan’s father had gone down in a sublimely vain attempt to rescue the last lord of Rocaverde; even before that time the brothers had chosen to be together in the castle.

Here the Orient had not penetrated; the severe carved oak, the somber at tried hangings, the gray stone, all breathed of a half monastic Spain. Contrasted with the glowing color and rich warmth of the violet room at the castle, the effect was inexpressibly dreary.

They looked first to the great bed, with its dark draperies. Lucena averted his gaze at once, shrinking slightly as his heart went out to the friend albeit most keenly conscious of the treachery. But Floria flashed noiselessly across the room and sank down by the bed, laying her cheek against the clenched hand that drooped beside the fine patrician hand whose white wrist was crossed by a scarlet line, sign visible of those forgotten days in Fez.

From the shadow of the lower end, Leone Valdi rose and went to Lucena.

“Come, my lord!” he urged, his sunken features feverishly and unnaturally illuminated. “Come, look at him! He is quiet enough now; a little while ago his words came fast, and you would not have liked to hear, but he is quiet now. Come, my lord! You remember him as he was months ago––El Sonriente.”

He put his hand on Lucena’s arm, and the noble yielded to the pressure, too absorbed for petty resentment of a familiarity without precedent. But when he stood at his cousin’s side there rose in his eyes something which momentarily silenced even Valdi. Leaning forward, he studied the calm face intently and eagerly.

In the stupor which held him, Estevan was defended neither by pride nor reserve; and every line of pain or endurance, every shadow of self-repression, every restraint set by a habit of thought, was evident in the grave repose that followed delirium. The characters graven on his face by the ordeal of the last few months were there for Lucena to read; watching him, Floria saw the coming of the same perplexity and vague doubt which she had felt on the day of the first meeting in the forest.

Valdi saw it, also, from the position he had taken up beside Floria. He smiled in bitter satisfaction.

“My lord is content? I remember, long ago, when Don Estevan and his cousin quarreled the last time, how he flung himself from the castle in rage and defiance, riding over here to his own house. A fair-haired boy he was then, and the lord of Rocaverde himself a youth not yet nineteen. You came after him that same day, my lord; do you recall how he met you on the steps and ran into your arms, while you both laughed with wet eyes?”

“Leone!” murmured Floria, in reproachful entreaty.

If Lucena heard, he made no sign; when at last he spoke, it was without changing his- steady gaze.

“I should like him to know,” he said in subdued tones which came with curious softness after Valdi’s thin, harsh voice. “If he recovers consciousness, I should like him to know that I pardoned what was done. If he remembers, it might make it easier––”

Floria raised her head proudly.

“Does he look as though he required that, señor?” she asked.

“Doña Floria?”

She rested her cheek again. on the drooping hand.

“It may be because I am a woman, señor, and dull. But I see in his face no shame or guilt which demands forgiveness. ‘There has been a mistake; I knew it the first time I heard him speak your name, señor.”

Lucena’s gray eyes flashed into fire.

“He never denied the truth!” he exclaimed passionately. “Doña Floria, he practically confessed!”

“You were ready to believe, my lord!” cried Valdi. “You sought not far to save him. Cousin failed cousin that day, and Don Estevan pays!”

Lucena faced him, white to the lips.

“What do you mean, Leone Valdi? What do you and this girl know?”

Padre Jacinto gently drew the trembling Arria to a seat, and turned to watch the two men.

“She knows nothing,” declared the Italian, his worn frame shaken with contending excitement and caution. “She met Don Estevan, and felt him innocent. I know––what Gonsalvo could have told if they had not put him beyond recapture. I have been afraid to speak; I am afraid now, because of that oath I took which I am breaking! But he has borne it long enough! Shall no one be generous but he?”

“I cannot bid you break your oath, Leone Valdi,” said Padre Jacinto agitatedly. ‘‘But I can promise to cleanse your conscience of all stain, if you do so.

“I will speak! I would now, though you could not pardon, padre!” answered Valdi, his eyes on those of Lucena, which left no doubt that the possibility of silence had passed. “My lord, I was with Don Estevan all through the night of Gonsalvo’s escape. Pedro Mirando is dead; but those live who can tell you, if they will. That evening when you took Don Estevan to your room, the castle knew well enough what he was saying to you, and unrest lay on us like a fever. Was there no guessing how fierce and sullen a tide surged and lapped about your quiet door, my lord––that you sent him out into it alone?”

The tinted lamps swaying in the warm summer wind; the fair head resting against the tawny panther-skin, whose sinister green eyes shone out beside the smiling blue ones––was this reality or clinging nightmare?

“I was an old man, not quick to see clearly what I feared; but I loved Don Estevan. And I was close enough to the ground to feel what passed unnoticed by those on the heights.

“My lord, near midnight you send Don Estevan in search of Gomez. In the great hall he met Pedro Mirando. When they moved away together I followed. If I had gone to you, instead–– But I could not know.

“When we reached Mirando’s room there was no light; in the dense blackness Don Estevan hesitated for an instant, and I slipped before him across the threshold. It was one of It was one of the buttress rooms, like my own; by the door a little angle jutted out, and here I crouched down. As the watchman called twelve on the tower above, a light blazed up, and I saw Don Estevan standing alone before a circle of men. Alone, and with a silken sash where his sword should have hung––for the night was hot, and he had come from you, my lord. But he only laughed a little as he looked from one to another and back to Mirando barring the door.” Leone broke off, absorbed in his own narrative and seeing only down the vistas behind.

No one spoke, but the pause stirred him and he brought his eyes back to Lucena.

“My lord, the trap had closed! Could he help himself? They told him that they dared not let you find the truth from Gonsalvo, as all knew you would next day. It was your life or theirs, unless Gonsalvo was put beyond your reach. They had arranged to assassinate you that night while you slept, keeping Don Estevan a prisoner until all was over. They proved to him their power to do it, and offered him the chance of saving you by freeing Gonsalvo. Oh, he realized well enough what it meant, my lord! I saw El Sonriente die there in the smoky, half-lit room!

“But Don Estevan consented. He gave his word to set Gonsalvo free––to keep their secret, at any cost to himself––to make no defense which might provoke you to researches, exacting in return that they should plot against you no more. He promised to fulfil the agreement to the intent and not to the bare word only, Mirando dictating the oath with a cunning that closed all escape. And as Don Estevan touched his lips to the ivory crucifix they gave him, his eyes met mine in the corner where I crouched.

“My lord, when I sleep each night I see again the light that rushed into his face as he comprehended that I had heard and was free––free to go to you, free to tell that story and save his more than life!”

“Could I do that––even that little thing––for him? No. I saw the room turn black before me with the dread of discovery, and tried to shrink farther back into the shadow. He had looked calmly at Mirando again, when my movement brought a loose pebble rattling down from the masonry wall.

“I have been a coward, always a coward; I swore what they bade me. Don Estevan has never reproached me, but I knew––I knew! And they have watched me since; Mirando would never have let me reach you, my lord.

“Everything went wrong; every circumstance turned against Don Estevan, then and afterward. He would not let Gomez suffer as they urged; he never saw you alone, my lord, or he might have made some poor defense. That morning in the great hall, Pedro Mirando stood behind you, watching Don Estevan, with ready fingers on the hilt of his stiletto. My lord, my lord––you believe me?”

“Believe?” said Lucena. “I think I never believed that other. There is no punishment for what I have done, and no forgiveness!” He turned, and hid his forehead against the dark draperies of the canopy.

In the hush Padre Jacinto came forward, his kindly face full of pity.

“My son, I give no names, I accuse no one; but what Leone Valdi has told is true. I learned it in the confessional, on the morning of Don Estevan’s trial. Since Pedro Mirando is dead––God pardon him!––I may say so much. And though Don Estevan kept his word to them, they failed in theirs to him. I tried to warn you one evening, my son, but you misunderstood me.”

Silence succeeded. In the exhaustion of reaction Valdi leaned against a chair, still trembling from head to food. Long before, Arria had covered her face and the tears trickled through her slim fingers.

Floria was the first to speak, her sweet voice never more gentle.

“Señor, will you not try to keep him with us?”

Slowly Lucena raised his head and turned to look at her.

“He had wanted you so, señor! I think he might live if he understood.”

“I ordered the physician to follow,” answered Lucena hopelessly. “But––”

He leaned over the bed, leaving unspoken the thought that he deserved the penalty of Estevan’s loss, since there could be none more severe.

There pressed back upon him the memory of so many impulses, sternly held in check, which, followed, might have prevented this. In that first month there had been one night when he had actually descended through the sleeping castle, resolved to go alone to the Quinta and force Estevan to look at him and speak. But in the end his overmastering pride had conquered and he had returned.

“Wake him if you can, my lord!” said Valdi grimly. “Call him; he has often called you.”

Lucena, watching the still face, made an imperative gesture for silence.

Something––the excited voices, or, perhaps, that one voice so long desired––had arrived at the inner chamber where Estevan’s consciousness had taken refuge. Very gradually the dark lashes unclosed and the violet eyes gazed into Lucena’s––dreamily at first, then with growing wonder and realization.

“Estevan––I know––at last!” said Lucena unsteadily.

Estevan regarded him tenderly.

“Leone has told us. Estevan, spare me again, and live!”

“I wanted you to know,” answered Estevan, the faint, clear voice holding the familiar caress. “Señor, I wanted that; the rest does not matter much. The shadows––it is you this time, señor?”

Lucena laid his hand upon the other’s.

“I thought you came last night, and knew afterward that it was not so. Señor, this was not your fault––this tangle. What else could we have done, you and I?”

“You are coming back!” exclaimed Lucena with a passion almost fierce. “Estevan, we will go back––together!”

“I think I left something––out there. I cannot remember.” He paused. Then the frank boyish smile flashed up again. “After all, it was for you, señor, though not in the way I used to plan. Lucena for Lucena!––the old cry!”

The curtaining lashes fell with the last word, or the anguish in Lucena’s face might have driven back the mist fast closing in again.

“Señor, I will try,” added Don Estevan, speaking with evident effort. “If I were not so tired––Was it last night we spent at the Gaviota’s helm? No. Last night, Mirando was here. Mirando––” He lingered uncertainly over the name, then abruptly snatched his hand from Lucena’s and clasped it across his eyes. “Leone!” he cried sharply. “Close the window! You hear––you hear! Las doce, y todo es sereno! Bid Mirando silence them––I consented long ago!”

Lucena drew back, startled and confronted with his own utter helplessness. Arria had risen, and Padre Jacinto came a step nearer, his lips moving soundlessly.

But Floria sprang up and laid her hands on Estevan’s shoulders.

“Estevan, Estevan!” she cried in rebellion and grief. ‘‘Have you forgotten me? There is no danger, no disgrace––only Don Luís and I! And I need you––need you, Estevan!”

The cry ran through the room, in the silver cadences of the one voice in his world which could wake no dark thoughts. Once more, the fever cleared away and left him free. A great recollection rose in his worn face, a content infinitely great.

“Hush!” he said clearly. “I shall live. I could not find you, Floria.” He drew the dark head protectingly down to his breast.

In the profound stillness that succeeded, no one ventured to move or speak. The room commenced to take on the first rosy tinges of approaching sunset; the warmer light flickered capriciously from one to another, staining Arria’s cheek with color and deepening softly about Lucena.

The tinkle of little bells broke in upon the hush, increasing in loudness, until there sounded clear the pattering of hoofs on the forest soil. There was the sound of voices in the hall outside, and Don Bernardo appeared hastily at the door.

“The physician, my lord!” he announced breathlessly.

“Very well,” answered Lucena. “Let him enter.”

The Arab who obeyed was not less skilful for being selfish as only an Oriental can be. The furtive glance he took at Lucena, as he saluted, was sufficient to convince him that Estevan’s death was not desired by his dangerous cousin. He crossed to the bed, and after an instant’s survey, bent and whispered a caution to Floria. She did not move, and deftly he put aside the waves of soft, dark hair that shadowed Estevan’s serene face.

When he turned, it was to bow to Lucena, with an exaggerated humility that could not quite mask his satisfaction and relief.

“Master and lord, the honored patient is sleeping. If, when he wakes, it is to find this lady by him, all will be well. The gates of death have been unlocked, but for this time he is not to enter.”

The quiver of emotion that crossed Lucena’s face left it very white and tired. Looking at the two cousins, a stranger would have said that his was the trial and the long darkness. But, as he had been silent before Doña Soledad, so he was silent now.

The Arab waited a little, then spoke with even greater deference.

“If it is pleasing to my lord, there should be stillness in this room, and fewer guests. The old man could remain.” He glanced at Leone Valdi, well knowing his devotion to Estevan during the exile.

Bernardo vanished from the door, where he had lingered after introducing the physician; Padre Jacinto also moved in that direction, his radiant eyes still wet.

Lucena looked long at the bed, then walked slowly to Arria.

“Come!” he said, and the word was more than a caress.

She swayed toward him. Throwing his arm about her, he led her from the room.

Not any virtue could have so bound him to her as did the knowledge that she shared in his injustice to Estevan; no one could have lived this hour with him save the one who, like him, was at fault. The brave faith which was so beautiful in Floria would have stung with intolerable reproach did his wife profess it.

As they went out, Arria glanced back; from the shelter of Estevan’s clasp, Floria smiled at her with all the old, glad sweetness.

On the gray stone terrace, where Estevan and Mirando had once met for the young noble to receive one more proof of how completely he had forfeited the love so prized, Lucena and Arria stopped together.

The delicate pink of sky and air had become a glowing crimson; the very drops of water in the neglected fountain were transformed to liquid rubies; the victorious tide sighed contentedly through the gorge.

There was no need of speech between these two; Lucena’s arm drew her a little closer as they stood by the low stone wall, and Arria yielded to the vague delight of his touch, while her dreaming eyes strayed across the forest. But presently she looked up.

“Luís, only Pedro Mirando is dead. The others are not.”

Lucena smiled slightly, as he had once smiled at Estevan in declaring his intention toward Gonsalvo.

“The others are––not. Did you think I had forgotten, Arria?”

“No,” she answered. “I did not think that.”

Their glances were quietly comprehensive. Never would those violet eyes coax Lucena into indulgence for an enemy.

Juanito, lingering near the head of the terrace, caught a glimpse of what passed, and retreated hastily. Not quickly enough, however, for Lucena saw him and made a sign of summons.

“You would speak with me, Juan Perez?” he asked, not without kindness.

The boy came nearer, his eyes afire.

“My lord, I have heard!” he explained, with incoherent impetuosity. “May I tell the village, my lord? May I tell Rosa Paredes, and that Julio Lopez who called me traitor because I carried Doña Floria’s message? May I––” He broke off, abashed at his own daring, yet mutely urging the plea.

“Yes, to-morrow,” replied Lucena.“Now, send me Don Bernardo. He rides to the castle; go with him, and at dawn tell whom you will.”

Arria slipped from his arms as the delighted Juan retired; when Bernardo appeared they were standing side by side.

“Don Bernardo,” said Lucena composedly; “Leone Valdi has a list of names to tell you. You will ride to the castle and carry those names to Miguel Faria, who commands there until I return, together with a letter which I shall give you. Inform Doña Soledad that I remain at the Quinta until Don Estevan and I come home.”

“You will see that the orders I send to Don Miguel are fulfilled before you return. And you will return at dawn.”

The officer looked at the two confronting him, and had no doubt of what he was to witness. As he vanished, Arria laid her hand on Lucena’s arm.

“Luís,” she murmured, “should I have loved you if you had been less the master of Rocaverde?”

At the steps from the hall Padre Jacinto paused, surveying them with innocent benevolence. He carried a snapped chain––a chain of topazes and rosy pearls––which had slipped from Floria’s neck as she sank down by Estevan’s couch.

“I shall give it back to her to-morrow,” he reflected.

Juan Perez had his hour next morning, notwithstanding that even Lucena’s caution had not prevented the news from spreading over the whole island almost as soon as Bernardo d’Allariz arrived at the castle. Happily, Don Miguel’s action had been equally prompt, and this time there were no escapes to report.

All night long the village hummed with excitement, while lights flashed busily from house to house. Though Juan claimed as dawn the first streak of color in the east, he knew that his tale had already been told and retold.

As once before he had sped up the castle road, so now he raced down it in the cool white light, head thrown back and eyes aglow

“Hola!” he cried, the ringing shout clear as a bugle-call. “Hola, village of sleepy ones! Wake, señores! My lord and El Sonriente are coming home!”

And Rocaverde awoke.

When partial quiet was restored, through very exhaustion of inquiry and exclamation, Juan contemplated the people from his elevated position on the curb of the fountain in the public square.

“Now will you call me that name, Julio Lopez?” he challenged loftily. “Aha! And you, Rosa Paredes, with your half-deaf Valentino, will you say now that my lord should long since have freed Rocaverde from Don Estevan and me?”

“I will say the last half, Juanito,” came in Rosa’s clear voice.

Juan posed, undisturbed, on the narrow stone rim.

“Oh, you may laugh, señores! I care not; I am going back to the Quinta. You may tell Padre Jacinto this time, Emilia. Francisco, I go with you on the next voyage; El Sonriente promised me a year ago. We will capture a Moor.”

Five leagues and more from Granada

  Heaves a bold bark upon the sea;

There is plenty of good red gold, ha-ha!

  And a Moorish trinket––no less––for me!

sang Diaz, in gay mockery.

“Very good, Francisco––very good!” retorted his future comrade. “But I can stay no longer listening to folly; Don Bernardo started for the Quinta an hour past. Adios, señores!”

“And the Castilian?” questioned a feminine voice.

The pause was eloquent; the thought of the village was a caress. But Juan had the closing word.

“When you see the Castilian again, señores, she will be a Lucena.”

The first sunbeams fell across the tranquil sea, stealing into the Gaviota’s deserted cabin and trailing luminous fingers over the tumbled cushions and the jade chessmen on their shelf; then climbing with the sun, they reached their old playground, and kindled the violet room to a glory of lapis-lazuli and sapphire.

Over beyond the mountain, Floria was sweeping her courtly salute to the Quinta’s guests, lifting a face all radiance.

“Señor, he is awake, and asks for you.”

Arria gathered the little figure into her arms, as Lucena passed over to his cousin.