CHAPTER VI.

WEB UPON WEB.

The next day, to the discomfiture of the courtiers, Calderon and the
Infant of Spain were seen together, publicly, on the parade; and the
secretary made one of the favoured few who attended the prince at the
theatre. His favour was greater, his power more dazzling than ever it
had been known before. No cause for the breach and reconciliation being
known, some attributed it to caprice, others to the wily design of the
astute Calderon for the humiliation of Uzeda, who seemed only to have
been admitted to one smile from the rising sun in order more signally to
be reconsigned to the shade.

Meanwhile, Fonseca prospered almost beyond his hopes. Young, ardent,
sanguine, the poor novice had fled from her quiet home and the indulgence
of her free thoughts, to the chill solitude of the cloister, little
dreaming of the extent of the change. With a heart that overflowed with
the warm thoughts of love and youth, the ghostlike shapes that flitted
round her, the icy forms, the rigid ceremonials of that life, which is
but the mimicry of death, appalled and shocked her. That she had
preserved against a royal and most perilous, because unscrupulous suitor,
her fidelity to the absent Fonseca, was her sole consolation.

Another circumstance had combined with the loss of her protectress and
the absence of Don Martin to sadden her heart and dispose her to the
cloister. On the deathbed of the old woman, who had been to her as a
mother, she had learned a secret hitherto concealed from her tender
youth. Dark and tragic were the influences of the star which had shone
upon her birth, gloomy the heritage of memories associated with her