the sombre splendour of the Spanish court, dying just six months after
the birth of her child, and before she had seen the almonds blossom twice
in the orchard, or plucked the second year's fruit from the old gnarled
fig-tree that stood in the centre of the now grass-grown courtyard. So
great had been his love for her that he had not suffered even the grave
to hide her from him. She had been embalmed by a Moorish physician, who
in return for this service had been granted his life, which for heresy
and suspicion of magical practices had been already forfeited, men said,
to the Holy Office, and her body was still lying on its tapestried bier
in the black marble chapel of the Palace, just as the monks had borne her
in on that windy March day nearly twelve years before. Once every month
the King, wrapped in a dark cloak and with a muffled lantern in his hand,
went in and knelt by her side calling out, '_Mi reina_! _Mi reina_!' and
sometimes breaking through the formal etiquette that in Spain governs
every separate action of life, and sets limits even to the sorrow of a
King, he would clutch at the pale jewelled hands in a wild agony of
grief, and try to wake by his mad kisses the cold painted face.

To-day he seemed to see her again, as he had seen her first at the Castle
of Fontainebleau, when he was but fifteen years of age, and she still
younger. They had been formally betrothed on that occasion by the Papal
Nuncio in the presence of the French King and all the Court, and he had
returned to the Escurial bearing with him a little ringlet of yellow
hair, and the memory of two childish lips bending down to kiss his hand
as he stepped into his carriage. Later on had followed the marriage,
hastily performed at Burgos, a small town on the frontier between the two
countries, and the grand public entry into Madrid with the customary
celebration of high mass at the Church of La Atocha, and a more than
usually solemn _auto-da-fe_, in which nearly three hundred heretics,
amongst whom were many Englishmen, had been delivered over to the secular