"I told the lie to save your life.

Do you believe me now ?" He gazed at her with haggard eyes for many moments before he spoke.
"How can it be true ?" he asked, but his voice shook in his throat.

"You were there--I saw you leave his room--" "No, that you never saw!" she cried, well knowing how impossible it was, since she had been locked in till after he had gone away.
"I saw your dress--not this one--what you wore this afternoon." "Not this one?
I put on this court dress before I got out of the room in which you had locked me up.

Inez helped me--I pretended that I was she, and wore her cloak, and slipped away, and I have not been back again.
You did not see me." Mendoza passed his hand over his eyes and drew back from her.

If what she said were true, the strongest link was gone from the chain of facts by which he had argued so much sorrow and shame.