“By no means,” replied the Spaniard calmly; “yet you can attribute the remark to my wish to serve you. During the remainder of our conference I will silence it, and can therefore be brief.”
“So much the better,” was the curt response. “Well, then, so you insist that you will neither keep the secret which you have the honour of sharing with his Majesty, nor——”
“Stay!” she eagerly interrupted. “The Emperor Charles took care to make the bond which united me to him cruelly hateful, and therefore I am not at all anxious to inform the world how close it once was.”
Here Don Luis bit his lips, and a frown contracted his brow. Yet he controlled himself, and asked with barely perceptible excitement, “Then I may inform his Majesty that you would be disposed to keep this secret?”
“Yes,” she answered curtly.
“But, so far as the convent is concerned, you persist in your refusal?”
“Even a noble and kind man would never induce me to take the veil.”
Now Quijada lost his composure, and with increasing indignation exclaimed: “Of all the men on earth there is probably not one who cares as little for the opinion of an arrogant woman wounded in her vanity. He stands so far above your judgment that it is insulting him to undertake his defence. In short, you will not go to the convent?”
“No, and again no!” she protested bitterly. “Besides, your promise ought to bind you to still greater brevity. But it seems to please your noble nature to insult a defenceless, ill-treated woman. True, perhaps it is done on behalf of the mighty man who stands so far above me.”
“How far, you will yet learn to your harm,” replied Don Luis, once more master of himself. “As for the child, you still seem determined to withhold it from the man who will recognise it as his solely on this condition?”