hat his
tribulations stirred her pity, or that the fame of him which rang
through Europe shed upon his withering frame some of the transfiguring
radiance of romance?

It marked, indeed, the change in him that he should pause to question,
whose erstwhile habit had been blindly to accept the good things tossed
by Fortune into his lap. But question he did, pondering that
parting taunt of hers to which, for emphasis, she had given an odd
redundancy--"You a Spaniard of Spain!" Could her meaning have been
plainer? Was not a Spaniard proverbially as quick to love as to
jealousy? Was not Spain, that scented land of warmth and colour, of
cruelty and blood, of throbbing lutes under lattices ajar, of mitred
sinners doing public penance, that land where lust and piety went hand
in hand, where passion and penitence lay down together--was not Spain
the land of love's most fruitful growth? And was not a Spaniard the very
hierophant of love?

His thoughts swung with sudden yearning to his wife Juana and their
children, held in brutal captivity by Philip, who sought to slake upon
them some of the vindictiveness from which their husband and father had
at last escaped. Not that Antonio Perez observed marital fidelity more
closely than any other Spaniard of his time, or of any time. But Antonio
Perez was growing old, older than he thought, older than his years. He
knew it. Madame de Chantenac had proved it to him.

She had reproached him with never coming to see her at Chantenac,
neglecting to return the too assiduous visits that she paid him here at
Pau.

"You are very beautiful, madame, and the world is very foul," he had
excused himself. "Believe one who knows the world, to his bitter cost.
Tongues will wag."

"And your Spanish pride will not suffer that clods may talk of you?"

"I am thinking of you, madame."

"Of me?" she had answered. "Why, of me they talk already--talk their
fill. I must pretend blindness to the leering eyes that watch me each
time I come to Pau; feign unconsciousness of the impertinent glances of
the captain of the castle there as I ride in."

"Then why do you come?" he had asked point-blank. But before her sudden
change of countenance he had been quick to add: "Oh, madame, I am
full conscious of the charity that brings you, and I am deeply, deeply
grateful; but--"

"Charity?" she had interrupted sharply, on a laugh that was
self-mocking. "Charity?"

"What else, madame?"

"Ask yourself," she had ans