Mendoza.

"Let us sit down, then. You must be tired after all you have done. And
we have much to say to each other."

"How could I be tired now?" she asked, with a loving smile; but she sat
down on the stone seat in the embrasure, close to the window.

It was just wide enough for two to sit there, and Don John took his
place beside her, and drew one of her hands silently to him between both
his own, and kissed the tips of her fingers a great many times. But he
felt that she was watching his face, and he looked up and saw her
eyes--and then, again, many seconds passed before either could speak.
They were but a boy and girl together, loving each other in the tender
first love of early youth, for the victor of the day, the subduer of the
Moors, the man who had won back Granada, who was already High Admiral of
Spain, and who in some ten months from that time was to win a decisive
battle of the world at Lepanto, was a stripling of twenty-three
summers--and he had first seen Dolores when he was twenty and she
seventeen, and now it was nearly two years since they had met.

He was the first to speak, for he was a man of quick and unerring
determinations that led to actions as sudden as they were bold and
brilliant, and what Dolores had told him of her quarrel with her father
was enough to rouse his whole energy at once. At all costs she must
never be allowed to pass the gates of Las Huelgas. Once within the
convent, by the King's orders, and a close prisoner, nothing short of a
sacrilegious assault and armed violence could ever bring her out into
the world again. He knew that, and that he must act instantly to prevent
it, for he knew Mendoza's character also, and had no doubt but that he
would do what he threatened. It was necessary to put Dolores beyond his
reach at once, and beyond the King's also, which was not an easy matter
within the walls of the King's own palace, and on such a night. Don John
had been but little at the court and knew next to nothing of its
intrigues, nor of the mutual relations of the ladies and high officers
who had apartments in the Alcazar. In his own train there were no women,
of course. Dolores' brother Rodrigo, who had fought by his side at
Granada, had begged to be left behind with the garrison, in order that
he might not be forced to meet his father. Dona Magdalena Quixada, Don
John's adoptive mother, was far away at Villagarcia. The Duchess
Alvarez, though fond of Dolores, was Mistress of th