“I pray you, my Lord Archbishop,” she says in a low voice, “by the love you bear me and the king, to bring home to the castle the Infanta Juana, who has escaped. Tell her from me--to whom she will not listen in person--that it is her health that alone prevents her from joining her husband. As soon as she has recovered from her confinement she shall start, should the archduke still refuse to join her in Spain.” Talavera stood before the queen, his eyes cast on the ground. He knew that she was sending him on a fruitless errand to Juana, who, short of main force, would obey no one. He knew how near her extravagance bordered on madness, and that this knowledge was breaking the queen’s heart, but the weakness in which he found her forbade his reminding her of it. “What I can do I will; your Highness may rely on me,” was his answer. “Go--go at once!” cried the queen, trembling all over, and almost rising to her feet. “Would I had strength to do it, but--but,” and she sank back, almost fainting, into the arms of the Marquesa de Moya. * * * * * “Now we are alone,” she says, in a voice perfectly composed, having swallowed some strong medicine given to her by Beatrix. “Believe me, Hiya, I am deluded by no false hopes. The end is near. Fain would I see the end of these troubles. Oh, that Ferdinand were here!” “Shall an express be sent to his Highness?” asks the marquesa, endeavouring to master her grief. “No, no!” cries Isabel, in a full voice, rousing to a momentary excitement. “The king is commanding the army in France. Let me not trouble him. He knows that I am ill. He might,”--she stops--a deep sigh escapes her, a look of inexpressible longing comes into her eyes, fixed on vacancy, as if, by the spell of her great love, she would draw him to her. Even to Beatrix she would not own the anguish she feels at his prolonged absence. “Before I die,” she continues, “I must see the succession settled, and the king named Regent. All the documents are prepared. I should have liked to tell him so face to face. I will not command his presence, but I would that he had come to me as he was wont.” Something in the pathetic insistence with which she spoke of him told an ill-assured mind. She dared not look at the marquesa, for she felt she would read her thoughts. Had Ferdinand changed? There was agony in the thought, but it was there. That strange prescience, which so often accompanies the passing of life into death, had come to her with a revelation more bitter than the grave. Worn with a life of constant hardship (in peace or war she was ever by his side) and broken by the loss of her children, although of the same age, she had become old while he was still comely enough to wed another wife. She knew it. Martial, erect, the fire of youth still gleaming in his eye, and his masterful spirit still unsubdued.