thought him dead, and he is deeply touched. He desires
your leave to come and prostrate himself at your feet."

She crimsoned from brow to chin, then paled again; her bosom heaved in
tumult. Between dread and yearning she spoke a faint consent.

Next day he came, brought by Frey Miguel to the convent parlour,
where her Excellency waited, her two attendant nuns discreetly in the
background. Her eager, frightened eyes beheld a man of middle height,
dignified of mien and carriage, dressed with extreme simplicity, yet
without the shabbiness in which Frey Miguel had first discovered him.

His hair was of a light brown--the colour to which the golden locks of
the boy who had sailed for Africa some fifteen years ago might well have
faded--his beard of an auburn tint, and his eyes were grey. His face was
handsome, and save for the colour of his eyes and the high arch of his
nose presented none of the distinguishing and marring features peculiar
to the House of Austria, from which Don Sebastian derived through his
mother.

Hat in hand, he came forward, and went down on one knee before her.

"I am here to receive your Excellency's commands," he said.

She steadied her shuddering knees and trembling lips.

"Are you Gabriel de Espinosa, who has come to Madrigal to set up as a
pastry-cook?" she asked him.

"To serve your Excellency."

"Then be welcome, though I am sure that the trade you least understand
is that of a pastry-cook."

The kneeling man bowed his handsome head, and fetched a deep sigh.

"If in the past I had better understood another trade, I should not now
be reduced to following this one."

She urged him now to rise, hereafter the entertainment between them was
very brief on that first occasion. He departed upon a promise to come
soon again, and the undertaking on her side to procure for his shop the
patronage of the convent.

Thereafter it became his custom to attend the morning Mass celebrated
by Frey Miguel in the convent chapel--which was open to the public--and
afterwards to seek the friar in the sacristy and accompany him thence
to the convent parlour, where the Princess waited, usually with one
or another of her attendant nuns. These daily interviews were brief
at first, but gradually they lengthened until they came to consume
the hours to dinner-time, and presently even that did not suffice, and
Sebastian must come again later in the day.

And as the interviews increased and lengthened, so they