"The trenches of San Roque must first be opened in England!" replied he, answering her gay smile with unusual gravity.
"No," was her reply; "there we spring a mine; and the best engineer in Christendom has his hand on the match."
Santa Cruz understood enough of her meaning, not to make a second observation in so public a passage; and bowing to her beckoning finger, he followed her into her apartment.
He held in his hand the first official dispatches from Ceuta. The last had not arrived. But the fugitive merchants from Larach were then in the palace, with their calamitous account of the fall of that fortress.
The Queen was enraged at these determined acts of hostility in the man to whom she had condescended to humble herself as a suppliant; and vehemently arraigning the insolence that durst disdain her returning favour, she preceded Santa Cruz to the chamber of her royal husband.
On the King's being told the fate of Larach; and learning, by the discomfiture of Don Joseph de Penil, how nearly Ceuta had shared the same disaster, he issued his orders that the troops just called off from the lines of San Roque, should be employed without delay in a final vindication of the Christian name in the plains of Barbary.
These forces had been intended by Isabella and her secret counsellor, to make a descent on the British shore; and there, as Santa Cruz had guessed, assert the rights of him who had purchased the support of Philip by a written pledge for the restitution of Gibraltar. But at this moment resentment obliterated every promise; and, in the rage of revenge against the man who had disdained her, more as a woman than a queen, she at once announced to her husband, that it was his own rebellious subject, the Duke de Ripperda, who, under the assumed name of Aben Humeya, but as a real apostate and a traitor, waged war in Africa against his King and his God.
Philip's amazement was creditable to his heart; and, when unquestionably convinced, his indignation against the Duke's irreligion superseded the expected resentment for his rebellion. He summoned his council; and in full assembly of the ministers and grandees, degraded the Duke de Ripperda from all his honours, hereditary and by creation; confiscated his estates; and ordered the arms of his family to be obliterated from the Spanish college of arms.
With the feelings of an ancient Spanish nobleman, Santa Cruz saw the rapidity of this act of disgrace. Not in consideration of the degraded Duke; for in becoming an infidel, he had sunk himself below the power of man to cast him lower; but compassion for his blameless and exemplary son, filled the heart of Santa Cruz with honourable sympathy.
The Queen turned on him at the moment, and observing the expression of his countenance, said with a taunting surprise;—