y love for Anne that
it awakened in me thoughts of the loyalty I owed Juana, thoughts that
had never troubled me hitherto in my pleasure-loving life--and this not
only as concerned Anne herself, but as concerned all women. There was
something so ennobling and sanctifying about our love that it changed
at once the whole of my life, the whole tenor of my ways. I abandoned
profligacy, and became so staid and orderly in my conduct that I was
scarcely recognizable for the Antonio Perez whom the world had known
hitherto.

We parted there that day with a resolve to put all this behind us; to
efface from our minds all memory of what had passed between us! Poor
fools were we to imagine we could resist the vortex of circumstance
which had caught us. For three months we kept our engagement
scrupulously; and then, at last, resistance mutually exhausted, we
yielded each to the other, both to Fate.

But because we cherished our love we moved with caution. I was
circumspect in my comings and goings, and such were the precautions
we observed, that for four years the world had little suspicion, and
certainly no knowledge, that I had inherited from the Prince of Eboli
more than his office as Secretary of State. This secrecy was necessary
as long as Philip lived, for we were both fully aware of what manner of
vengeance we should have to reckon with did knowledge of our relations
reach the jealous King. And I think that but for Don John of Austria's
affairs, and the intervention in them of the Escovedo whom you say--whom
the world says I murdered, all might have been well to this day.

Escovedo had been, like myself, one of Eboli's secretaries in his day,
and it was this that won him after Eboli's death a place at the Royal
Council board. It was but an inferior place, yet the King remarked him
for a man shrewd and able, who might one day have his uses.

That day was not very long in coming, though the opportunity it afforded
Escovedo was scarcely such as, in his greedy, insatiable ambition, he
had hoped for. Yet the opportunity, such as it was, was afforded him
by me, and had he used it properly it should have carried him far,
certainly much farther than his talent and condition warranted.

It came about through Don John of Austria's dreams of sovereignty. You
will have heard--as who has not?--so much of Don John, the natural son
of Charles V, that I need tell you little concerning him. In body and
soul he was a very different man, in