“Truly, I love not Blanche,” says Don Pedro, “I will speedily take Toledo, and imprison her where she shall not escape. But her life——”
“Yes, her life!” cries Maria, rising from the estrado. “It is mine, you promised me. I claim it.”
“Now, por Dios, Maria, but you press me sore. Is it that you seek to be queen yourself?”
“Perhaps,” she answers, carelessly. “What if I do? Have you not told me a thousand times I was born to wear a crown?”
“This is no time for trifling,” answers Don Pedro, sternly. “I have made your son a future king. Let that suffice. The blood of Fadique clings to me still. I saw him in my fever, there, outside, in the patio, where he fell bathed in blood. And now another ghost will haunt me in that pale-faced demoiselle. So nearly had I passed into the silent land beyond the grave that to my weakened brain shadows came to me as real. I fain would add no more to that dim company which rise up in the silent night to curse me.”
As the words pass his lips, a page, fancifully attired as an Eastern slave, appears between the golden pillars of the hall, and, after prostrating himself on the ground, raises his arms aloft in Moorish fashion, and announces: “The queen-mother.”
Hastily advancing, Mary of Portugal stands before her son. On her face are the signs of deep emotion, almost of terror, as she hastily observes the impression her presence has produced.
“My son,” she says, in a low voice, “my son,” and as she speaks the words she stretches out her arms to embrace him. Then raising her head, her eyes fall upon the figure of Maria de Padilla, erect in the shadow behind, and in a moment the words she was about to utter die on her lips, and a tremor passes over her.
“You here!” her face flushing crimson, “you—Jezebel—that come between my son and me. I might have guessed it. I came to speak of mercy, before you who live by blood. Of honour—to one who never knew the word. Well do I know you and the current of your thoughts, and that you would prompt my son to an act of cruelty that will shake his very throne, and place him in the certainty of an alliance of vengeance.”
Silent, inscrutable, stands Maria, but Don Pedro interposes: “To what action do you allude, my mother?” he asks.