be able to boast himself
the favoured of the beautiful and opulent Isabella de Susan; it was
exasperating to discover now a new and more imperative reason for this
odious secrecy.

Never sped a lover to his mistress in a frame of mind more aggrieved
than that which afflicted Don Rodrigo as, tight-wrapped in his black
cloak, he gained the Calle de Ataud on that January night.

Anon, however, when by way of a garden gate and an easily escaladed
balcony he found himself in the presence of Isabella, the delight of her
effaced all other considerations. Her father was from home, as she had
told him in the note that summoned him; he was away at Palacios on some
merchant's errand, and would not return until the morrow. The servants
were all abed, and so Don Rodrigo might put off his cloak and hat, and
lounge at his ease upon the low Moorish divan, what time she waited upon
him with a Saracen goblet filled with sweet wine of Malaga. The room in
which she received him was one set apart for her own use, her bower, a
long, low ceilinged chamber, furnished with luxury and taste. The walls
were hung with tapestries, the floor spread with costly Eastern rugs;
on an inlaid Moorish table a tall, three-beaked lamp of beaten copper
charged with aromatic oil shed light and perfume through the apartment.

Don Rodrigo sipped his wine, and his dark, hungry eyes followed her as
she moved about him with vaguely voluptuous, almost feline grace. The
wine, the heavy perfume of the lamp, and the beauty of her played
havoc among them with his senses, so that he forgot for the moment his
Castilian lineage and clean Christian blood, forgot that she derived
from the accursed race of the Crucifiers. All that he remembered was
that she was the loveliest woman in Seville, daughter to the wealthiest
man, and in that hour of weakness he decided to convert into reality
that which had hitherto been no more than an infamous presence. He would
loyally fulfil the false, disloyal promises he had made. He would take
her to wife. It was a sacrifice which her beauty and her wealth should
make worth while. Upon that impulse he spoke now, abruptly:

"Isabella, when will you marry me?"

She stood before him, looking down into his weak, handsome face, her
fingers interlacing his own. She merely smiled. The question did
not greatly move her. Not knowing him for the scoundrel that he was,
guessing nothing of the present perturbation of his senses, she found it
very n