e.

After the ceremony the bride and bridegroom repaired to the Palazza
Bananas, the country seat of Pedro, who, though poor himself, had had
many costly estates handed down to him.

Here, so report tells us, after subjecting Isabella Angelica for three
years to the vilest insults and utmost cruelty, Pedro left her
temporarily and returned to the Court, now at Castille. Poor Isabella
Angelica! This was the gay world she had dreamed of--the ecstatic life
she had hoped and fully expected to live!

Then suddenly with the departure of her husband, she found peace--peace
in the rocky solitudes, in the scented gardens and rolling foothills;
and here this poor, lonely woman found fulfilment of all her maiden
dreams--"Love!"

No one knows the authentic story of her first meeting with Enrique
Baloona. Some say he was fishing for _bolawallas_[20] and she came
graciously up and asked him the time; others aver that he was passing
beneath her lattice and she dropped a fluted hair-tidy at his feet. But
anyhow, from the time they first met they never parted until it was
absolutely necessary. They pursued the course of their love through the
long, tranquil summer days and nights--every word they uttered one to
the other was sheer poetry. Enrique, who was a fully qualified
academician, painted the portrait reproduced on page 124. It is alas!
the only one in existence, all the others having been destroyed by the
Inquisition.

But alack! as is the way with all beauty, it is but short-lived. The end
of their peaceful passion came with the announcement of Pedro's return
from the Court, now at Aragon. Isabella Angelica, history relates, was
beside herself with misery. Enrique also was considerably upset.
Together the doomed couple arranged a plan of escape. They flew together
to the Villa Morla, a notorious abode of illicit lovers. It was here
that the enraged Pedro caught up with them and killed Enrique with a
look. Isabella Angelica was then taken against her will to join the
Court. At last at Madrid. For two years, Dr. Polata tells us, her heart
was numb with anguish; then gradually the life at Court, still at
Madrid, began to take effect on her malleable character. She became
intensely vicious: much of the sweetness portrayed in Enrique's portrait
vanished, leaving her expression cross and occasionally even sullen. All
the world knows of her meeting with the Infanta, so we will not dwell
upon it. One day her husband died unexpected