Donna Leonor spent the whole of the lingering days of the lingering week secluded in the grated mansion of black granite; and all she had for recreation and air, even in the summer heats, were the depths of a dark green garden surrounded by such lofty walls that nothing could be seen emerging from them save here and there the top of some melancholy cypress. But this short visit of hers to Our Lady of the Pillar sufficed for Don Ruy to fall madly in love with her on the May morning when he saw her kneeling before the altar in a radiance of sunlight, haloed by her golden hair, with her long lashes hanging over a _Book of Hours_, her rosary falling from between her delicate fingers, all elegant, gentle and white, with the whiteness of a lily blooming in the shade, looking yet whiter amid her black lace and the black satin gown that broke round her graceful form in hard folds over the chapel flags, the ancient flags of burying-places. When, after a moment of confusion and delicious wonder, he knelt, it was less to the Virgin of the Pillar, his divine Godmother, than to that mortal apparition; her name and life he knew not, but only that he would give his life and name for her if she would yield herself for so uncertain a price. Murmuring in a graceless prayer the three _Ave Maria’s_ with which he saluted Mary each morning, he picked up his _sombrero_, lightly descended the resounding nave, and stopped in the porch, waiting for her among the leprous beggars who were lousing themselves in the sun. But when, after a lapse of time, during which Don Ruy felt his heart beat with unaccustomed anxiety and fear, Donna Leonor passed and paused to moisten her fingers in the marble holy-water stoup, either from timidity or inattention, she did not raise her eyes to him under her drawn veil. With her attendant of the staring eyes glued to her side, and between the two lackeys as between twin towers, she leisurely crossed the square, stone by stone, enjoying, doubtless, as prisoners do, the expanse of air and the free sun that bathed it, and Don Ruy was astonished when she penetrated into the sombre arcade, with its stout pillars which supported the palace, and she disappeared through a narrow door all covered with iron-work. This then was the famous Donna Leonor, the lovely and noble lady of Lara.... Then commenced seven drawn-out days which he spent seated at his stone window-seat gazing at that black door, with its thick covering of iron-work, as if it were the door of Paradise, and an angel would issue from it to give him tidings of Eternal Bliss. At last the lingering Sunday came, and as, bearing a bunch of yellow carnations for his divine Godmother, he passed through the square at the hour of Prime, when the bells were ringing, he crossed Donna Leonor coming out, white, sweet, and pensive, from between the pillars of the dark arcade like a moon from between clouds. The carnations almost fell from his hands in the delightful agitation with