“It is too big for me,” she said piteously. He stood transfixed a moment; then forgot his dignity so far as to dive and recover the desecrated trinket. “God in heaven!” he began; then checked himself and choked down his fury. “A defect soon remedied,” he said, his voice quite hoarse. “But not my unfitness to wear it,” she answered. “O, father, have pity on me!” He went off like a madman, flinging back and forth the length of the room, and ended by stopping suddenly, his fists raised and clinched, to apostrophise space: “That our dearest hopes should have come to be realised--and for this! That we should have devoted our love, our diplomacy, our peace of mind to the welfare of this monster of inconsistency and ingratitude!” She cried out: “O, no, no! O, lord and father, not either!” He came round, actually grinding his teeth: “I foresaw this. I read indifference and rebellion in your reception of his Highness’s plenipotentiary. But I tell you that your protests will be of no avail; that we refuse to listen for an instant to any one of the fancied scruples which would deprive us, in the very fruition of our hopes, of the reward of so much disinterested self-sacrifice.” She let the storm pass, waiting with bowed head; and presently, with an effort to command himself, he put a question to her: “What is your unfitness? Speak!” She looked up, then, the tears brimming in her eyes. “I do not think I was born for a throne,” she said--so movingly, that his heart should have been touched a little. “Its grandeur frightens me.” He waved that absurdity aside with _hauteur_. To scratch his pride was to find the cold, inflexible Spaniard. “You were born your father’s daughter,” he said, with a brevity which was final. Then he bent his eyes searchingly on her. “Is there nothing else--no romantic folly of a young and foolish brain?” For one moment, so temperate his tone had fallen, she had a mad impulse to tell him the truth, to throw herself upon his mercy and his love. But the thought of whom she might endanger thereby came to her, in time to stay the confession on her lips. “I am so young, father,” she said. “If it is romance to want to keep my youth a little longer, and then to yield it to a humbler state than this, I am guilty of it, I suppose. But I do so love the simple things of life; and I am not heroic in the least.” “What need of heroism here, you fool?” “O, much, much! To throw away all that is dear to me to be an empress!” Still he searched her young innocence with that frowning stare. At length, stirring, and setting his lips grimly, he made to close the colloquy: “All folly and madness, as you must know. The step is taken; it is irrevocable; and you must reconcile yourself to the position imposed upon you.” “Imposed--imposed!” She wrung her pretty hands, and, writhing, pressed them to her mouth. “O, that is it--no choice for me--to give myself away from all I love!”