The latter, however, had also declined to grant any audiences that
afternoon. The royal lady, the Emperor's favourite sister, was in her
own room, adjoining her imperial brother's, talking with Don Luis
Quijada, the brave nobleman of whom the Spanish and the Netherland
soldiers had spoken with equal warmth.

His personal appearance rendered it an easy matter to believe in the
sincerity of their words, for the carriage of his slender, vigorous form
revealed all the pride of the Castilian noble. His face, with its
closely cut pointed beard, was the countenance of a true warrior, and the
expression of his black eyes showed the valiant spirit of a loyal, kind,
and simple heart.

The warm confidence with which Mary, the widow of the King of Hungary,
who fell in the Turkish war, gazed into Quijada's finely modelled,
slightly bronzed countenance proved that she knew how to estimate his
worth aright. She had sent for him to open her whole heart.

The vivacious woman, a passionate lover of the chase, found life in
Ratisbon unendurable. She would have left the city long ago to perform
her duties in the Netherlands--which she ruled as regent in the name of
her imperial brother--and devote herself to hunting, to her heart's
content, if the condition of the monarch's health had not detained her
near him.

She pitied Charles because she loved him, yet she was weary of playing
the sick nurse.

She had just indignantly informed Quijada what an immense burden of work,