But this is effaced by the agony of her he loves, for Hermoine is now pleading with her father as if for her own life, calling him loving names as if she adored him in her agony, and sobbing, though she has no tears: “Father, don’t you hear me, don’t you feel me?” As her arms are round the grim old Viceroy’s neck. “Don’t you know—that I—love this man!—See it, believe it by the agony of my breaking heart. If you kill him you kill me. I had mourned for him as dead before; must I be widowed AGAIN?” Thus supplicating, Hermoine de Alva looks lovelier in her despair than in her joy, for there is now about her a kind of nervous intensity and ethereal electricity that makes her not wholly of this earth; she is as Eve pleading for Adam, not to God, but—to Satan. But Satan is not merciful, and thinking her father does not really understand how it is her very life he is cutting short, she cries out: “You shall believe my love by this!” Then this being whom modesty now covers with blushes, in the presence of grim old arquebusiers and all the lackeys and attendants the noise has drawn to the doors of the room, walks up to Guy Chester and her arms go round him and she is kissing him and sobbing over him, and begging him not to think she would have betrayed him for all the world, she loves him so. Even as she does this Hermoine de Alva seems suddenly to change. For, as she flutters over him, Guy, having golden opportunity, whispers in her ear: “Get me time—warn my boats—get me time!” At this work she goes with every artifice of mind and body. She looks about, then seems to grow faint, and mutters: “Water—water—my head!” At this her father cries: “Good heavens, you are swooning!” To him she jeers: “That would make it easy for you. When I came to I would be bereft. No, I’ll not faint while he lives—water!” This Alva would bring her, but starting, she motions him away and shudders: “Not from your hands; my maid, Alida—quick!” On this the Moorish girl, who is looking on, a strange pathetic interest in her face, comes to her bringing a goblet. As Hermoine drinks she whispers: “To the landing, call them on—boats—the English boats!” A quick look of intelligence flies over the subtle Moorish face, and Alida, bearing the goblet with her, steps out of the apartment. This the Duke sees not. After his daughter has shuddered from him he has turned away and pressed his hand upon his heart, his face working strangely. From this on he does not seem to wish to look upon his child, who now comes with all her soul to delay, if she cannot change, her father’s purpose. In this she is strangely aided by an enemy; the Countess de Pariza comes laughing in and giggles, viciously: “You are going to burn him by the slow fire, he is a heretic.” “Heretic in your teeth, hag,” cries Chester, “I am as good a Catholic as my lord of Alva himself.” And memory of his God coming over him with coming doom, he begins to tell his beads.