One night when Donna Leonor was telling her beads in her room with her attendants by the light of a waxen torch, the Lord of Lara entered very slowly, bearing in his hand a sheet of parchment, and a pen dipped in his bone inkstand. With a rough sign he dismissed the attendants, who feared him as though he were a wolf, and pushing a footstool near the table, he turned his face towards Donna Leonor, which he had composed into a calm and pleasant expression, as if he were only coming to ask for something natural and easily done, and said: 'Lady, I want you to write me here a letter that is very necessary to write.’ ... She was so accustomed to submission that without more reflection or curiosity, and only going to hang the beads which she had been telling at the head of the bed, she arranged herself on the footstool; and with much application, in order that the writing might be neat and clear, her elegant fingers traced the first short line which the Lord of Lara dictated, and it was: 'My knight....’ But when he dictated the next, and longer one, in a cutting manner, Donna Leonor threw down the pen as if it burnt her, and recoiling from the table, cried out in her affliction: 'Why must I write such things, and so false?’ In a burst of fury the Lord of Lara tore a dagger from his girdle, and shook it close to her face, with a dull roar: 'Either you write what I order you, and what is needful for me, or, by God, I will pierce your heart!’ Whiter than the waxen torch that lighted them, her flesh creeping at that glittering blade, and in a supreme fear that accepted everything, Donna Leonor murmured: 'By the Virgin Mary, do not harm me! Do not be angry, for I live to obey and serve you. Now order, and I will write.’ Then, clenching his fists on the ends of the table where he had placed the dagger, the Lord of Lara crushed the fragile, unhappy woman under his hard, wounding gaze, and dictated, nay, flung at her hoarsely, piece by piece, dragged out, a letter that, when finished, and traced in a very hesitating and trembling hand, read: 'My knight, you have very ill understood, or very ill repay, my love for you, which I could never discover to you openly in Segovia. Now I am here at Cabril burning to see you, and if your desire corresponds to mine, you can very easily realise it, because my husband is absent at another property of his, and this of Cabril is quite easy and open. Come to-night, enter by the garden door beside the lane, pass the fish-pond, until you reach the terrace; there you will espy a ladder resting against one of the windows of the house, which is the window of my room, where you will be very sweetly welcomed by her who anxiously awaits you.’ 'Now, lady, sign your name below, for that is necessary above all!’ As red as if she were being stripped before a crowd, Donna Leonor slowly traced her name. 'And now'--ordered her husband more quietly through his clenched