"I must crave your Majesty's strict and instant attention," he said, suddenly dropping all ceremony. "I will only detain you for a moment if, as I anticipate, I receive your consent to what I have the honour of proposing to you."
At once the easily jealous woman froze into a Queen and fronted the young man with a haughty stare.
"Your Majesty," he began, "I do not dwell upon our services of the past night. They are known to you. Had it not been for my friends it is probable that no one of your party would at this moment have been left alive. Now the day is passing and you are no safer than you were last night. It is necessary, therefore, that you put yourselves unreservedly under the escort and protection of myself and my friends. We must leave La Granja at once."
"Never!" cried Maria Cristina, fiercely. "Am I, the Queen-Regent of Spain, to be thus badgered and commandeered? I have never suffered it since I left my father's house in Naples. A boy and a foreigner shall not be the first. My royal guards will assuredly be here in an hour at the latest. The roads will be cleared, and as for you, you shall be safe in prison cells, where, for your insolences, you ought to be lying at this moment."
"Then," said Rollo, gravely, "I deeply regret that I am obliged to use the only means that are open to me to fulfil my orders, and to induce your Highness to place yourself in safety."
"And pray," cried Maria Cristina, indignantly, "from whom can you have orders to place a Queen of Spain in restraint?"
In a moment Rollo realised that it was impossible for him to reveal his position as an officer of the Carlist armies, but a fortunate remembrance of some words dropped by the Abbot of Montblanch instantly gave him his cue.
"I act," he said calmly, "under the immediate direction of the Holy Father himself, at whose feet, in the Vatican of Rome, you shall one day kneel to ask pardon of your sins."
This unexpected reply seemed to agitate the Queen-Regent, who, though forced to create herself a party out of the men of liberal opinions in her realm, was at heart, like all the Bourbons, a convinced and even bigoted religionist. But Muñoz, who had hitherto been silent, stooped and whispered something in her ear.
"How am I to be convinced of that?" she cried, turning on him fiercely. "I will not believe it even from you!"