"In presence of the jailers, mother and son, both so fallen from their high fortune, threw themselves into each other's arms, and during the hour to which their interview was limited, they wept, without exchanging a word. Then a page informed Don Fadrique that the king required his presence. After a last embrace he left his mother, never again to behold her. The unfortunate woman's doom was sealed. From Llerena, by Alburquerque's order, she was conducted to the castle of Talavera, belonging to the queen-mother, and governed by Gutier Fernandez of Toledo, one of her liege men. There Leonora did not long languish. A few days after her arrival, a secretary of the queen brought the governor an order for her death. The execution was secret and mysterious, and it is certain Don Pedro had no cognisance of it. Doubtless the queen had exacted from Alburquerque the sacrifice of her rival, who was no longer protected by the pity of Juan Nuñez de Lara. 'Many persons,' says Pero Lopez de Ayala, a Spanish chronicler whom M. Mérimée has taken as one of his principal authorities, and whose trustworthiness, impugned by modern authors, he ably vindicates in his preface, 'were grieved at this deed, foreseeing that from it wars and scandal would spring, inasmuch as Leonora had sons already grown up and well-connected.' "But the hour of vengeance was not yet come, and the sons of Leonora bowed their heads before her assassins." One of them, whose youth might have been deemed incapable of such dissimulation, went beyond mere submission. A few days after Leonora's death, Don Pedro, during a progress through various provinces of his kingdom, reached the town of Palencia, in whose neighbourhood Tello, then hardly fifteen years old, and who, following the example of his elder brothers, kept aloof from the court, had shut himself up in the castle of Palenzuela. "As there was some fear he might prove refractory, Juan Manrique, a Castilian noble, was sent to assure him of the king's good will towards him, and at the same time to gain over the knights, his counsellors. Manrique succeeded in his mission, and brought Don Tello to Palencia. Instructed by his guide, the youth hastened to kiss his brother's hand. 'Don Tello,' said the king, 'do you know that your mother, Doña Leonora, is dead?' 'Sire,' replied the boy-courtier, 'I have no other mother or father than your good favour.'"