atural that he should ask her to appoint the day.

"It is a question you must ask my father," she answered him.

"I will," said he, "to-morrow, on his return." And he drew her down
beside him.

But that father was nearer than either of them dreamed. At that very
moment the soft thud of the closing housedoor sounded through the house.
It brought her sharply to her feet, and loose from his coiling arms,
with quickened breath and blanching face. A moment she hung there,
tense, then sped to the door of the room, set it ajar and listened.

Up the stairs came the sound of footsteps and of muttering voices. It
was her father, and others with him.

With ever-mounting fear she turned to Don Rodrigo, and breathed the
question: "If they should come here?"

The Castilian stood where he had risen by the divan, his face paler
now than its pale, aristocratic wont, his eyes reflecting the fear that
glittered in her own. He had no delusion as to what action Diego de
Susan would take upon discovering him. These Jewish dogs were quickly
stirred to passion, and as jealous as their betters of the honour of
their womenfolk. Already Don Rodrigo in imagination saw his clean red
Christian blood bespattering that Hebrew floor, for he had no weapon
save the heavy Toledo dagger at his girdle, and Diego de Susan was not
alone.

It was, he felt, a ridiculous position for a Hidalgo of Spain. But his
dignity was to suffer still greater damage. In another moment she had
bundled him into an alcove behind the arras at the chamber's end, a tiny
closet that was no better than a cupboard contrived for the storing of
household linen. She had-moved with a swift precision which at another
time might have provoked his admiration, snatching up his cloak and hat,
and other evidences of his presence, quenching the lamp, and dragging
him to that place of cramped concealment, which she remained to share
with him.

Came presently movements in the room beyond, and the voice of her
father:

"We shall be securest from intrusion here. It is my daughter's room.
If you will give me leave, I will go down again to admit our other
friends."

Those other friends, as Don Rodrigo gathered, continued to arrive for
the next half-hour, until in the end there must have been some twenty
of them assembled in that chamber. The mutter of voices had steadily
increased, but so confused that no more than odd words, affording no
clue to the reason of this gathering, had reached