She now confronted the inflexible nobleman, not a feature in whose clear-
cut, nobly moulded, soldierly face revealed what moved him.

When, in a businesslike tone, he announced his sovereign's will, she
interrupted him with the remark that she knew all this, and had
determined to oppose her own resolve to his Majesty's wishes.

Don Luis calmly allowed her to finish, and then asked: "So you refuse to
take the veil? Yet I think, under existing circumstances, nothing could
become you better."

"Life in a convent," she answered firmly, "is distasteful to me, and I
will never submit to it. Besides, you were hardly commissioned to
discuss what does or does not become me."

"By no means," replied the Spaniard calmly; "yet you can attribute the
remark to my wish to serve you. During the remainder of our conference
I will silence it, and can therefore be brief."

"So much the better," was the curt response. "Well, then, so you insist
that you will neither keep the secret which you have the honour of
sharing with his Majesty, nor----"

"Stay!" she eagerly interrupted. "The Emperor Charles took care to make
the bond which united me to him cruelly hateful, and therefore I am not
at all anxious to inform the world how close it once was."

Here Don Luis bit his lips, and a frown contracted his brow. Yet he
controlled himself, and asked with barely perceptible excitement, "Then
I may inform his Majesty that you would be disposed to keep this secret?"