“Señor Infante, Grand Master of Santiago, you are my prisoner,” he says, laying his hand on his shoulder, and the men-at-arms move forward from the entrance to where he stands. “I am no man’s prisoner!” cries Don Fadique, putting his hand on his sword. “If all were as faithful to the king, he would have truer followers than he has. Nor shall you take me, vile instrument of a strumpet’s vengeance,” turning to draw his weapon upon Don Garcia, but the hilt of the sword had become so entangled in the embroidered scarf he wears, taken from the queen at Valladolid, nothing will move it. [Illustration: A VIEW IN ARANJUEZ.] “Officers,” commands the king, rising from the throne and passing on through the gilded arches into the Hall of the Ambassadors beyond, with that majesty he knows so well how to assume--“do your duty.” But the guards held back, spite of the order of the king. Don Fadique was an Infante, a great caballero, almost equal to Don Pedro, the Grand Master of Santiago, and moreover, though unarmed, boldly facing them. “Traitors!” exclaims Don Garcia, drawing his rapier, “do you hesitate?” Then they all fell on Don Fadique, and a struggle for life ensued. “God and Santiago to my aid!” cries Fadique, rushing from side to side of the open _patio_ pursued by the men-at-arms, Don Garcia all the while standing in his place, and Don Pedro from behind the arches suddenly appearing, and shouting out: “At him! At him! Traitor and bastard! Kill him!” At last, one of the officers--Hermanes by name, excited by the anger of the king, and seeing that the others were but half-hearted in their attack, touched by the desperate defence of an unarmed man--struck Don Fadique such a blow on the shoulder as felled him to the ground, with his face downwards, the rest falling on him until he died, his long auburn hair, clotted with blood, making a glory round him where he lay. From the depths of the _patio_ Maria de Padilla appeared, her taper fingers clasping the pearl embroideries of her long robe with such force, that as she moved she strewed them on the floor. She had seen all, hidden by the panels of a Moorish door. Not for an instant had Don Fadique escaped her, from the moment he entered the Court of the Monteria until his mutilated body lay before her. He was her prey. Now she could assure herself that life was gone. In the calm of death he was beautiful, the last agony only marked in the widely open eyes, full of defiance, and the bloodless lips parted as with a groan. So like was the dead face to Don Pedro, that for an instant Maria’s heart melted, and she turned away. “What, Maria,” exclaimed Don Pedro, sneeringly, “fear you to look on the face of a dead enemy? Rather tremble before a living one! The boy is dead; all traitors deserve to die”; and advancing from where he stood in the archway, he spurned the body with his foot, laying bare the pool of blood in which it lay.