“On the word of an Englishman------” I began. The fan touched my arm. The eyes of the duenna glittered over the cards. “This woman belongs to that man, too,” muttered Seraphina. “And yet she used to be faithful--almost a mother. _Misericordia!_ Señor, there is no one in this unhappy place that he has not bought, corrupted, frightened, or bent to his will--to his madness of hate against England. Of our poor he has made a rabble. The bishop himself is afraid.” Such was the beginning of our first conversation in this court suggesting the cloistered peace of a convent. We strolled to and fro; she dropped her eyelids, and the agitation of her mind, pictured in the almost fierce swiftness of her utterance, made a wonderful contrast to the leisurely rhythm of her movements, marked by the slow beating of the fan. The retirement of her father from the world after her mother’s death had made a great solitude round his declining years. Yes, that sorrow, and the base intrigues of that man--a fugitive, a hanger-on of her mother’s family--recommended to Don Balthasar’s grace by her mother’s favour. Yes! He had, before she died, thrown his baneful influence even upon that saintly spirit, by the piety of his practices and these sufferings for his faith he always paraded. His faith! Oh, hypocrite, hypocrite, hypocrite! His only faith was hate--the hate of England. He would sacrifice everything to it. He would despoil and ruin his greatest benefactors, this fatal man! “Señor, my cousin,” she said picturesquely, “he would, if he could, drop poison into every spring of clear water in your country.... Smile, Don Juan.” Her repressed vehemence had held me spellbound, and the silvery little burst of laughter ending her fierce tirade had the bewildering effect of a crash on my mind. The other two looked up from their cards. “I pretend to laugh to deceive that woman,” she explained quickly. “I used to love her.” She had no one now about her she could trust or love. It was as if the whole world were blind to the nefarious nature of that man. He had possessed himself of her little father’s mind. I glanced towards the old Don, who at that moment was brokenly taking a pinch of snuff out of a gold snuff-box, while the duenna, very sallow and upright, waited, frowning loftily at her cards. “It seemed as if nothing could restrain that man,” Seraphina’s voice went on by my side, “neither fear nor gratitude.” He seemed to cast a spell upon people. He was the plenipotentiary of a powerful religious order--no matter. Don Carlos knew these things better than she did. He had the ear of the Captain-General through that. “Sh! But the intrigues, the intrigues!” I saw her little hand clenched on the closed fan. There were no bounds to his audacity. He wasted their wealth. “The audacity!” He had overawed her father’s mind; he claimed descent from his Irish kings, he who------ “Señor, my English cousin, he even dares aspire to my person.” The game of cards was over.