But he felt that she was watching his face, and he looked up and saw her eyes--and then, again, many seconds passed before either could speak.
They were but a boy and girl together, loving each other in the tender first love of early youth, for the victor of the day, the subduer of the Moors, the man who had won back Granada, who was already High Admiral of Spain, and who in some ten months from that time was to win a decisive battle of the world at Lepanto, was a stripling of twenty-three summers--and he had first seen Dolores when he was twenty and she seventeen, and now it was nearly two years since they had met.
He was the first to speak, for he was a man of quick and unerring determinations that led to actions as sudden as they were bold and brilliant, and what Dolores had told him of her quarrel with her father was enough to rouse his whole energy at once.

At all costs she must never be allowed to pass the gates of Las Huelgas.

Once within the convent, by the King's orders, and a close prisoner, nothing short of a sacrilegious assault and armed violence could ever bring her out into the world again.

He knew that, and that he must act instantly to prevent it, for he knew Mendoza's character also, and had no doubt but that he would do what he threatened.

It was necessary to put Dolores beyond his reach at once, and beyond the King's also, which was not an easy matter within the walls of the King's own palace, and on such a night.