It was November now, and it had been June of the preceding year when he
had ridden away from Madrid to put down the Moriscoes, who had risen
savagely against the hard Spanish rule. He had left Dolores de Mendoza
an hour before he mounted, in the freshness of the early summer morning,
where they had met many a time, on a lonely terrace above the King's
apartments. There were roses there, growing almost wild in great earthen
jars, where some Moorish woman had planted them in older days, and
Dolores could go there unseen with her blind sister, who helped her
faithfully, on pretence of taking the poor girl thither to breathe the
sweet quiet air. For Inez was painfully sensitive of her affliction, and
suffered, besides blindness, all that an over-sensitive and imaginative
being can feel.

She was quite blind, with no memory of light, though she had been born
seeing, as other children. A scarlet fever had destroyed her sight.
Motherless from her birth, her father often absent in long campaigns,
she had been at the mercy of a heartless nurse, who had loved the fair
little Dolores and had secretly tormented the younger child, as soon as
she was able to understand, bringing her up to believe that she was so
repulsively ugly as to be almost a monster. Later, when the nurse was
gone, and Dolores was a little older, the latter had done all she could
to heal the cruel wound and to make her sister know that she had soft
dark hair, a sad and gentle face, with eyes that were quite closed, and
a delicate mouth that had a little half painful, half pathetic way of
twitching when anything hurt her,--for she was easily hurt. Very pale
always, she turned her face more upwards than do people who have sight,
and being of good average woman's height and very slender and finely
made, this gave her carriage an air of dignity that seemed almost pride
when she was offended or wounded. But the first hurt had been deep and
lasting, and she could never quite believe that she was not offensive to