With so many ghastlier terrors had the mind of Carlos grown familiar, that this one came to him in the guise of a relief. So "the sharpness of death" for him might mean no more than a dagger's thrust, after all! One moment here, the next in his Saviour's presence. Who that knew aught of the tender mercies of the Holy Office could do less than thank God on his bended knees for the prospect of such a fate!
"It is not death that I fear," he answered, looking at her steadily.
"But you may as well live; nay, you had better live. For you may repent, may save your unhappy soul. I shall pray for you."
"I thank you, dear and kind señora; but, through the grace of God, my soul is saved already. I believe in Jesus Christ--"
"Hush! for Heaven's sake!" Doña Inez interrupted, dropping her fan and putting her fingers in her ears. "Hush! or ere I am aware I shall have listened to some dreadful heresy. The saints help me! How should I know just where the good Catholic words end, and the wicked ones begin? I might be caught in the web of the evil one; and then neither saint nor angel, no, nor even Our Lady herself, could deliver me. But listen to me, Don Carlos, for at all events I would save your life."
"I will listen gratefully to aught from your lips."
"I know that you dare not attempt flight from the city at present. But if you could lie concealed in some safe and quiet place within it till this storm has blown over, you might then steal away unobserved. Don Garçia says that now there is such a keen search made after the Lutherans, that every man who cannot give a good account of himself is like to be taken for one of the accursed sect. But that cannot last for ever; in six months or so the panic will be past. And those six months you may spend in safety, hidden away in the lodging of my lavandera."[#]
[#] Washerwoman.
"You are kind--"
"Peace, and listen. I have arranged the whole matter. And once you are there, I will see that you lack nothing. It is in the Morrero;[#] a house hidden in a very labyrinth of lanes, a chamber in the house which a man would need to look for very particularly ere he found it."