He has grown pale, though he speaks quietly, and his blue eyes gleam
dangerously. He is always quiet when most angry.

"It is. And we shall understand each other fully before we part--be
very sure of that. You shall learn what I have inherited from my
Castilian mother. You shall learn whether you are to play fast and
loose with me at your sovereign will. Does your excellent memory still
serve you, or must I tell you what day the twenty-third of September
is to be?"

He looks up at her, still pale, that smile on his lips, that gleam in
his eyes.

"My memory serves me perfectly," he answers coolly; "it was to have
been our wedding-day."

_Was to have been_. As he speaks the words coldly, almost cruelly,
as she looks in his face, the last trace of color leaves her own. The
hot fire dies out of her eyes, an awful terror comes in its place.
With all her heart, all her strength, she loves the man she so
bitterly reproaches. It seems to her she can look back upon no time in
which her love for him is not.

And now, it _was_ to have been!

She turns so ghastly that he springs to his feet in alarm.

"Good Heaven, Inez! you're not going to faint, are you? Don't! Here,
take my chair, and for pity's sake don't look like that. I'm a wretch,