mante--and the mark of a pen
under words uttered by the warrior-maid herself--words to warm a
cooler youth than this one from over seas:--"_Why seek I one who flies
from me?--Why implore one who deigns not to send me reply?_"

Whereupon there was no further delay as to reply--there was found an
open gate to a garden where only stars gave light, where little hands
were held for a moment in his--soft whispers had answered his own--and
he was held in thrall by a lace wrapped senorita whose face he had not
even looked on in the light. All of Castile could give one no better
start in a week than he had found for himself in three days in the new
world of promise.

For there were promises--and they were sweet. They had to do with a
tryst two nights away--then the lady, whom he called "Dona Bradamante"
because of the page torn from that romance, would enlighten him as to
her pressing need of the aid of a gentleman, and courage would be hers
to tell him why a marked line and a scarlet lily had been let fall in
his path--and why she had trusted his face at first sight--though he
had not yet seen her own--and why--

It was the usual thing--the page of a poem and a silken scarf as a
guerdon of her trust.

He found the place of the tryst with ease for a stranger in the Mexic
streets, but a glimmer of white robe was all he saw of his unknown
"Dona Bradamante." Others were at the tryst, and their staves and arms
lacked no strength. He heard a woman scream, then he heard her try
again to scream and fail because of a hand on her throat, and beyond
that he knew little for a night or two, and there was not much of day
between.

Monkly robes were the next thing in his range of vision--one face in
particular, sallow and still with eyes glancing sideways, seeing all
things;--divining much! soft steps, and bandages, and out of silence
the excited shrillness of Don Diego Maria Francisco Brancadori the
tutor:--the shepherd who had lost track of his one rather ruffled
lamb.

Pious ejaculation--thanks to all the saints he could think of--horror
that the son of an Eminence should be thus abused--prophecies of the
wrath to come when the duchess, his mother--At this Don Ruy groped for
a sword, and found a boot, and flung it, with an unsanctified word or
two, in the direction of the lamentation.

"You wail worse than a dog of a Lutheran under the yoke," he said in
as good a voice as he could muster with a cut in his lip. "What matter
how mu