Beatriz, presented to her Fonseca's letter.

As with an enchanting mixture of modesty and eagerness Beatriz, half
averting her face, bent over the well-known characters, Calderon gazed
upon her with a scrutinising and curious eye.

The courtier was not, in this instance, altogether the villain that from
outward appearances the reader may have deemed him. His plan was this:
he had resolved on compliance with the wishes of the prince--his safety
rested on that compliance. But Fonseca was not to be sacrificed without
reserve. Profoundly despising womankind, and firmly persuaded of their
constitutional treachery and deceit, Calderon could not believe the
actress that angel of light and purity which she seemed to the enamoured
Fonseca. He had resolved to subject her to the ordeal of the prince's
addresses. If she fell, should he not save his friend from being the
dupe of an artful _intriguante_?--should he not deserve the thanks of Don
Martin for the very temptation to which Beatriz was now to be submitted?
If he could convince Fonseca of her falsehood, he should stand acquitted
to his friend, while he should have secured his interest with the prince.
But if, on the other hand, Beatriz came spotless through the trial; if
the prince, stung by her obstinate virtue, should menace to sink
courtship into violence, Calderon knew that it would not be in the first
or second interview that the novice would have any real danger to
apprehend; and he should have leisure to concert her escape by such means
as would completely conceal from the prince his own connivance at her
flight. Such was the compromise that Calderon had effected between his
conscience and his ambition. But while he gazed upon the novice, though
her features were turned from him, and half veiled by the headdress she
had assumed, strange feelings, ominous and startling, like those
remembrances of the Past which sometimes come in the guise of prophecies