CHAPTER IV.
Dolores knew that there was no time to reflect as to what she should do, if her father found her hiding in the embrasure, and yet in those short seconds a hundred possibilities flashed through her disturbed thoughts.
She might slip past him and run for her life down the corridor, or she might draw her hood over her face and try to pretend that she was some one else,--but he would recognize the hood itself as belonging to Inez,--or she might turn and lean upon the window-sill, indifferently, as if she had a right to be there, and he might take her for some lady of the court, and pass on.

And yet she could not decide which to attempt, and stood still, pressing herself against the wall of the embrasure, and quite forgetful of the fact that the bright moonlight fell unhindered through all the other windows upon the pavement, whereas she cast a shadow from the one in which she was standing, and that any one coming along the corridor would notice it and stop to see who was there.
There was something fateful and paralyzing in the regular footfall that was followed instantly by the short echo from the vault above.

It was close at hand now she was sure that at the very next instant she should see her father's face, yet nothing came, except the sound, for that deceived her in the silence and seemed far nearer than it was.

She had heard horrible ghost stories of the old Alcazar, and as a child she had been frightened by tales of evil things that haunted the corridors at night, of wraiths and goblins and Moorish wizards who dwelt in secret vaults, where no one knew, and came out in the dark, when all was still, to wander in the moonlight, a terror to the living.

The girl felt the thrill of unearthly fear at the roots of her hair, and trembled, and the sound seemed to be magnified till it reechoed like thunder, though it was only the noise of an advancing footfall, with a little jingling of spurs.
But at last there was no doubt.