Dolores had not understood her father's words.

All that was clear to her was that Don John was dead and that his murderers were gone.

Had there been danger still for herself, she could not have felt it; but there was none now as she laid her hand upon the key to enter the bedchamber.

At first the lock would not open, as it had been injured in some way by being so roughly shaken when Mendoza had tried it.

But Dolores' desperate fingers wound themselves upon the key like little ropes of white silk, slender but very strong, and she wrenched at the thing furiously till it turned.