mantilla and a black dress with sprigs of orange blossoms in her hair
and on her breast for the only note of white. Her lovely, gentle face
was white, of course, from the universal powder, and so were the faces
of the others, who talked in low tones around her, with scarcely more
animation than so many masks. The handsomest of them, whom we decided to
be her sister, arranged the bride's mantilla, and was then helped on
with hers by the others, with soft smiles and glances. Two little girls,
imaginably sorry the feast was over, suppressed their regret in the
tutelage of the maiden aunts and grandmothers who put up cakes in
napkins to carry home; and then the party vanished in unbroken decorum.
When they were gone we found that in studying the behavior of the bride
and her friends we had not only failed to identify the bridegroom, but
had altogether forgotten to try.




VIII


The terrible Torquemada dwelt for years in Valla-dolid and must there
have excogitated some of the methods of the Holy Office in dealing with
heresy. As I have noted, Ferdinand and Isabella were married there and
Philip II. was born there; but I think the reader will agree with me
that the highest honor of the city is that it was long the home of the
gallant gentleman who after five years of captivity in Algiers and the
loss of his hand in the Battle of Lepanto, wrote there, in his poverty
and neglect, the first part of a romance which remains and must always
remain one of the first if not the very first of the fictions of the
world. I mean that