ce for you. Let me conduct you to your own chamber!"

"Not without the added presence of one of my people, sir," said Rollo,
sternly; "this had not happened but for your intention of secretly
deserting us, and leaving us to hold the castle alone against the cruel
enemy of whose approach we risked our lives to warn you!"

Meanwhile the Queen-Regent had been casting her eyes wildly and
uncomprehendingly around. Now she looked at the motionless form of the
girl in the arms of El Sarria, now at the dead woman upon the floor, but
all without the least token that she understood how the tragedy had come
to pass.

But suddenly she threw her arms into the air and uttered a wild scream.

"Where is my Isabel--where is my daughter? She was in the arms of the
nurse Susana who lies there before us. They have killed her also. This
devil-born has killed her! Where shall I find her?--My darling--the
protected of the Virgin, the future Queen of all the Spains?"

But it was a question no one could answer. None had seen the little
Isabel, since the moment when she had passed forth through the portal of
the palace into the night, clasped in the faithful arms of her nurse.

She had not cried. She had not returned. Apparently not a soul had
thought of her, save only the woman whose life had been laid down for
her sake, as a little common thing is set on a shelf and forgotten.

So, for this reason, the question of Maria Cristina remained unanswered.
For, even as a star shoots athwart the midnight sky of winter, so the
little Queen of Spain had passed and been lost in the darkness and
terror without the beleaguered castle of La Granja.

CHAPTER XXXIII

CONCHA WAITS FOR THE MORNING

The dead woman was carried into the mortuary attached to the smaller
chapel of the _Colegiata_, and placed in one of the rude coffins which
had been deposited there in readiness upon the first news of the plague.
This being done, the mind of Rollo turned resolutely to the problem
before him.

Every hour the situation seemed to grow more difficult. As far as Rollo
was concerned, he owned himself frankly a mercenary, fighting in a cause
for which he, as a free-born Scot, could have no great sympathy. But
mercenary as he was, in his reckless, gallant, devil-take-the-hindmost
philosophy of life there lurked at least no trace of treachery, nor any
back-going from a pledged and plighted word. He had undertaken to
capture the young Queen and her mother a