"Hush, child!" he said. "Do not hurt me any more--it must have been my fault."
He grew more calm, and though his face was very grave and sad, the natural dark colour was slowly coming back to it now, and his hands were steady again. The girl was too young, and far too different from him, to understand his nature, but she was fast realizing that he was not the man he had always seemed to her.
"Oh, if I had only known!" she cried, in deep distress. "If I had only guessed, I would have been so different! I was always frightened, always afraid of you, since I can remember--I thought you did not care for us and that we always displeased you--how could we know?"
Mendoza lifted one of his hands from the sword hilt, and took hers, with as much gentleness as was possible to him. His eyes became clear again, and the profound emotion he had shown subsided to the depths whence it had risen.
"We shall never quite understand each other," he said quietly. "You cannot see that it is a man's duty to do what is right for his children, rather than to sacrifice that in order to make them love him."
It seemed to Dolores that there might be a way open between the two, but she said nothing, and left her hand in his, glad that he was kind, but feeling, as he felt, that there could never be any real understanding between them. The breach had existed too long, and it was far too wide.
"You are headstrong, my dear," he said, nodding at each word. "You are very headstrong, if you will only reflect."
"It is not my head, it is my heart," answered Dolores. "And besides," she added with a smile, "I am your daughter, and you are not of a very gentle and yielding disposition, are you?"
"No," he answered with hesitation, "perhaps not." Then his face relaxed a little, and he almost smiled too.
It seemed as if the peace were made and as if thereafter there need not be trouble again. But it was even then not far off, for it was as impossible for Mendoza to yield as it would have been for Dolores to give up her love for Don John. She did not see this, and she fancied that a real change had taken place in his disposition, so that he would forget that he had threatened to send her to Las Huelgas, and not think of it again.