darken his house. Moreover, he was the King's man, devoted
to Philip body and soul, as his sovereign, ready to give his life ten
times for his sovereign's word, and thinking it treason to doubt a royal
thought or motive. He was a rigid old man, a Spaniard of Spain's great
days, fearless, proud, intolerant, making Spain's honour his idol,
capable of gentleness only to his children, and loving them dearly, but
with that sort of severity and hardness in all questions where his
authority was concerned which can make a father's true affection the
most intolerable burden to a girl of heart, and which, where a son is
its object, leads sooner or later to fierce quarrels and lifelong
estrangement. And so it had happened now. For the two girls had a
brother much older than they, Rodrigo; and he had borne to be treated
like a boy until he could bear no more, and then he had left his
father's house in anger to find out his own fortune in the world, as
many did in his day,--a poor gentleman seeking distinction in an army of
men as brave as himself, and as keen to win honour on every field. Then,
as if to oppose his father in everything, he had attached himself to Don
John, and was spoken of as the latter's friend, and Mendoza feared lest
his son should help Don John to a marriage with Dolores. But in this he
was mistaken, for Rodrigo was as keen, as much a Spaniard, and as much
devoted to the honour of his name as his father could be; and though he
looked upon Don John as the very ideal of what a soldier and a prince
should be, he would have cut off his own right hand rather than let it
give his leader the letter Dolores had been writing so long; and she
knew this and feared her brother, and tried to keep her secret from him.

Inez knew all, and she also was afraid of Rodrigo and of her father,
both for her sister's sake and her own. So, in that divided house, the
father was against the son, and the daughters were allied against them
both, not in hatred, but in terror and because of Dolores' great love
for Don John of Austria.

As they sat at the table it began to rain again, and the big drops beat
against the windows furiously for a few minutes. The panes were round
and heavy, and of a greenish yellow colour, made of blown glass, each
with a sort of knob in the middle, where the iron blowpipe had been
separated from the hot mass. It was impossible to see through them at
all distinctly, and when the sky was dark with rain they admi