indnesses. I am, I have--my heart--my brain, everything is
confused. I only know that you, that Isabella, have been kind to me and
I, I have--it will kill me yet! Good fortune gone! Art gone! A Dios,
treacherous world! A Dios, divine art!"

As he uttered the last sentence he drew his hand from the artist's grasp,
rushed back into the studio, and with streaming eyes pressed his lips to
the palette, the handle of the brush, and his ruined picture; then he
dashed past Coello into the street.

The artist longed to go to his child; but the king detained him in the
park. At last he was permitted to return to the Alcazar.

Isabella was waiting on the steps, before the door of their apartments.
She had stood there a long, long time.

"Father!" she called.

Coello looked up sadly and gave an answer in the negative by
compassionately waving his hand.

The young girl shivered, as if a chill breeze had struck her, and when
the artist stood beside her, she gazed enquiringly at him with her dark
eyes, which looked larger than ever in the pallid, emaciated face, and
said in a low, firm tone:

"I want to speak to him. You will take me to the picture. I must see it."

"He has thrust his maul-stick through it. Believe me, child, you would
have condemned it yourself."

"And yet, yet! I must see it," she answered earnestly, "see it with these
eyes. I feel, I know--he is an artist. Wait, I'll get my mantilla."

Isabella hurried back with flying feet, and when a short time after,
wearing the black lace kerchief on her head, she descended the staircase
by her father's side, the private secretary de Soto came towards them,
exclaiming:

"Do you want to hear the latest news, Coello? Your pupil Navarrete has
become faithless to you and the noble art of painting. Don Juan gave him
the enlistment money fifteen minutes ago. Better be a good trooper, than
a mediocre artist! What is the matter, Senorita?"

"Nothing, nothing," Isabella murmured gently, and fell fainting on her
father's breast.

CHAPTER XXIII.

Two years had passed. A beautiful October day was dawning; no cloud
dimmed the azure sky, and the sun's disk rose, glowing crimson, behind
the narrow strait, that afforded ingress to the Gulf of Corinth.

The rippling waves of the placid sea, which here washed the sunny shores
of Hellas, yonder the shady coasts of the Peloponnesus, glittered like
fresh blooming blue-bottles.

Bare, parched rocks rise in naked beauty at t