CHAPTER V


Don John was a man not easily taken off his guard, but he started
perceptibly at Dolores' question. He did not change colour, however, nor
did his eyes waver; he looked fixedly into her face.

"No lady has been here," he answered quietly.

Dolores doubted the evidence of her own senses. Her belief in the man
she loved was so great that his words seemed at first to have destroyed
and swept away what must have been a bad dream, or a horrible illusion,
and her face was quiet and happy again as she passed him and went in
through the open entrance. She found herself in a vestibule from which
doors opened to the right and left. He turned in the latter direction,
leading the way into the room.

It was his bedchamber. Built in the Moorish manner, the vaulting began
at the height of a man's head, springing upward in bold and graceful
curves to a great height. The room was square and very large, and the
wall below the vault was hung with very beautiful tapestries
representing the battle of Pavia, the surrender of Francis the First,
and a sort of apotheosis of the Emperor Charles, the father of Don John.
There were two tall windows, which were quite covered by curtains of a
dark brocade, in which the coats of Spain and the Empire were woven in
colours at regular intervals; and opposite them, with the head to the
wall, stood a vast curtained bedstead with carved posts twice a man's