proud disdain. Certain it was that Donna Leonor knew him now, but she also knew the Moorish flower-woman squatted before her basket beside the fountain, or the poor who loused themselves in the sun before Our Lady’s porch. Nor could Don Ruy any longer think that she was cruel and cold. She was only royally remote, like a star that revolves and glitters high above, unconscious that below, in a world it cannot discern, eyes it does not suspect are contemplating it, adoring it, and intrusting it with the government of their fortune and destiny. Then Don Ruy thought, 'She will not, I cannot; it was a dream that is ended, and may Our Lady keep us both in her favour!’ And being a very discreet knight, as soon as he recognised that she could not be moved from her indifference, he neither sought her nor even raised his eyes any more to the gratings of her windows, nor did he even enter the Church of Our Lady when, casually, from the porch, he espied her kneeling with her graceful golden head bent over her _Book of Hours_. II The old attendant, whose eyes were more wide-open and harder than those of an owl, hastened to tell the Lord of Lara how a bold youth of comely appearance, a new tenant in the old house of the Archdeacon, continually crossed and re-*crossed the square, and posted himself in front of the church to throw his heart, through his eyes, at Donna Leonor. Very bitterly did the jealous nobleman know it already, for when, falconlike, he watched from his window the graceful lady on her way to church, he had observed the pauses and darted looks of that gallant youth, and had pulled his beard with rage. Ever since then, in truth, his most intense occupation had been to hate Don Ruy, the Canon’s impudent nephew, who had dared to raise his low desires to the great Lady of Lara. He now had him continually spied upon by a retainer, and knew where-*ever he went and stayed, the friends with whom he hunted or amused himself, and even the men who cut his doublets and furbished his sword--in fact, every hour of his life. And he watched Donna Leonor more closely still, her every movement, her most fugitive moods, her silences, her conversations with her attendants, her distractions over her embroidery, her habit of musing under the trees in the garden, her demeanour and colour when she returned from church. But Donna Leonor showed such unaltered serenity in the tranquillity of her heart, that not even the most fault-fancying jealousy could discover a blemish in her snow-white purity. Thereupon Don Alonso’s rancour was turned with redoubled asperity against the Canon’s nephew for having coveted her purity, her bright sun-coloured hair, and her royal heron’s neck, which were his alone and the rich delight of his life. And when he paced the sombre gallery of his mansion, resonant with its vaulted roof, wrapt in his fur-trimmed jerkin, the point of his grizzled beard thrust out in front, his thick