ave
learnt here tonight, or else resign yourself to an unshriven death. For
either you take that oath, or I rouse the servants and have you dealt
with as one who has intruded here unbidden for an evil end." She backed
away from him as she spoke, and threw wide the door. Then, confronting
him from the threshold, she admonished him again, her voice no louder
than a whisper. "Quick now! Resolve yourself. Will you die here with all
your sins upon you, and so destroy for all eternity the immortal soul
that urges you to this betrayal, or will you take the oath that I
require?"

He began an argument that was like a sermon of the Faith. But she cut
him short. "For the last time!" she bade him. "Will you decide?"

He chose the coward's part, of course, and did violence tomb fine
conscience. With the cross in his hand he repeated after her the words
of the formidable oath that she administered an oath which it must damn
his immortal soul to break. Because of that, because she imagined that
she had taken the measure of his faith, she returned him his dagger,
and let him go at last. She imagined that she had bound him fast in
irrefragable spiritual bonds.

And even on the morrow, when her father and all those who had been
present at that meeting at Susan's house were arrested by order of the
Holy Office of the Inquisition, she still clung to that belief. Yet
presently a doubt crept in, a doubt that she must at all costs resolve.
And so presently she called for her litter, and had herself carried to
the Convent of St. Paul, where she asked to see Frey Alonso de Ojeda,
the Prior of the Dominicans of Seville.

She was left to wait in a square, cheerless, dimly-lighted room pervaded
by a musty smell, that had for only furniture a couple of chairs and
a praying-stool, and for only ornament a great, gaunt crucifix hanging
upon one of its whitewashed walls.

Thither came presently two Dominican friars. One of these was a
harsh-featured man of middle height and square build, the uncompromising
zealot Ojeda. The other was tall and lean, stooping slightly at the
shoulders, haggard and pale of countenance, with deep-set, luminous dark
eyes, and a tender, wistful mouth. This was the Queen's confessor, Frey
Tomas de Torquemada, Grand Inquisitor of Castile. He approached her,
leaving Ojeda in the background, and stood a moment regarding her with
eyes of infinite kindliness and compassion.

"You are the daughter of that misguided man, Dieg