Her dress, too, she now suited to the position which she arrogated to
herself. But in doing so she had become a personage who could scarcely
be overlooked, and she rarely failed to be present on the very occasions
which brought together the most aristocratic Spanish society in Brussels.

So, after a fresh dispute with Alba, in which the victor on many a
battlefield was forced to yield, she had obtained his consent to retire
to Ghent instead of Mons.

True, the duke would have preferred to induce her to go to Spain, and
tried to persuade her to do so by the assurance that the King himself
desired to receive her there.

But she had been warned.

Through Hannibal Melas and other members of her own party she had learned
that Philip intended, if she came to Spain, to remove her from the eyes
of the world by placing her in a convent, and never had she felt less
inclination to take the veil.

Her departure from Brussels had done Alba and his functionaries a
service, for she had constantly forced herself into the government
building to obtain news of her son.

The great and opulent city of Ghent, the birthplace of the Emperor
Charles, of which he had once said to Francis I, the King of France,
that Paris would go into his glove (Gant), had been chosen by Barbara for
several reasons. The principal one was that she would find there several
old friends of former days, one of whom, her singing-master Feys, had