The harsh injustice that lay in this call to arrest men and women merely because they had departed from Seville before departure was in any way forbidden, revealed the severity with which the inquisitors intended to proceed. It completed the consternation of the New-Christians who had remained behind, and how numerous these were may be gathered from the fact that in the district of Seville alone they numbered a hundred thousand, many of them occupying, thanks to the industry and talent characteristic of their race, positions of great eminence. It even disquieted the well-favoured young Don Rodrigo de Cardona, who in all his vain, empty, pampered and rather vicious life had never yet known perturbation. Not that he was a New-Christian. He was of a lineage that went back to the Visigoths, of purest red Castilian blood, untainted by any strain of that dark-hued, unclean fluid alleged to flow in Hebrew veins. But it happened that he was in love with the daughter of the millionaire Diego de Susan, a girl whose beauty was so extraordinary that she was known throughout Seville and for many a mile around as la Hermosa Fembra; and he knew that such commerce—licit or illicitly conducted—was disapproved by the holy fathers. His relations with the girl had been perforce clandestine, because the disapproval of the holy fathers was matched in thoroughness by that of Diego de Susan. It had been vexatious enough on that account not to be able to boast himself the favoured of the beautiful and opulent Isabella de Susan; it was exasperating to discover now a new and more imperative reason for this odious secrecy.
Never sped a lover to his mistress in a frame of mind more aggrieved than that which afflicted Don Rodrigo as, tight-wrapped in his black cloak, he gained the Calle de Ataud on that January night.
Anon, however, when by way of a garden gate and an easily escaladed balcony he found himself in the presence of Isabella, the delight of her effaced all other considerations. Her father was from home, as she had told him in the note that summoned him; he was away at Palacios on some merchant's errand, and would not return until the morrow. The servants were all abed, and so Don Rodrigo might put off his cloak and hat, and lounge at his ease upon the low Moorish divan, what time she waited upon him with a Saracen goblet filled with sweet wine of Malaga. The room in which she received him was one set apart for her own use, her bower, a long, low ceilinged chamber, furnished with luxury and taste. The walls were hung with tapestries, the floor spread with costly Eastern rugs; on an inlaid Moorish table a tall, three-beaked lamp of beaten copper charged with aromatic oil shed light and perfume through the apartment.
Don Rodrigo sipped his wine, and his dark, hungry eyes followed her as she moved about him with vaguely voluptuous, almost feline grace. The wine, the heavy perfume of the lamp, and the beauty of her played havoc among them with his senses, so that he forgot for the moment his Castilian lineage and clean Christian blood, forgot that she derived from the accursed race of the Crucifiers. All that he remembered was that she was the loveliest woman in Seville, daughter to the wealthiest man, and in that hour of weakness he decided to convert into reality that which had hitherto been no more than an infamous presence. He would loyally fulfil the false, disloyal promises he had made. He would take her to wife. It was a sacrifice which her beauty and her wealth should make worth while. Upon that impulse he spoke now, abruptly:
"Isabella, when will you marry me?"
She stood before him, looking down into his weak, handsome face, her fingers interlacing his own. She merely smiled. The question did not greatly move her. Not knowing him for the scoundrel that he was, guessing nothing of the present perturbation of his senses, she found it very natural that he should ask her to appoint the day.
"It is a question you must ask my father," she answered him.
"I will," said he, "to-morrow, on his return." And he drew her down beside him.
But that father was nearer than either of them dreamed. At that very moment the soft thud of the closing housedoor sounded through the house. It brought her sharply to her feet, and loose from his coiling arms, with quickened breath and blanching face. A moment she hung there, tense, then sped to the door of the room, set it ajar and listened.
Up the stairs came the sound of footsteps and of muttering voices. It was her father, and others with him.
With ever-mounting fear she turned to Don Rodrigo, and breathed the question: "If they should come here?"
The Castilian stood where he had risen by the divan, his face paler now than its pale, aristocratic wont, his eyes reflecting the fear that glittered in her own. He had no delusion as to what action Diego de Susan would take upon discovering him. These Jewish dogs were quickly stirred to passion, and as jealous as their betters of the honour of their womenfolk. Already Don Rodrigo in imagination saw his clean red Christian blood bespattering that Hebrew floor, for he had no weapon save the heavy Toledo dagger at his girdle, and Diego de Susan was not alone.
It was, he felt, a ridiculous position for a Hidalgo of Spain. But his dignity was to suffer still greater damage. In another moment she had bundled him into an alcove behind the arras at the chamber's end, a tiny closet that was no better than a cupboard contrived for the storing of household linen. She had-moved with a swift precision which at another time might have provoked his admiration, snatching up his cloak and hat, and other evidences of his presence, quenching the lamp, and dragging him to that place of cramped concealment, which she remained to share with him.
Came presently movements in the room beyond, and the voice of her father:
"We shall be securest from intrusion here. It is my daughter's room. If you will give me leave, I will go down again to admit our other friends."
Those other friends, as Don Rodrigo gathered, continued to arrive for the next half-hour, until in the end there must have been some twenty of them assembled in that chamber. The mutter of voices had steadily increased, but so confused that no more than odd words, affording no clue to the reason of this gathering, had reached the hidden couple.
And then quite suddenly a silence fell, and on that silence beat the sharp, clear voice of Diego de Susan addressing them.
"My friends," he said, "I have called you hither that we may concert measures for the protection of ourselves and all New-Christians in Seville from the fresh peril by which we are menaced. The edict of the inquisitors reveals how much we have to fear. You may gather from it that the court of the Holy Office is hardly likely to deal in justice, and that the most innocent may find himself at any moment exposed to its cruel mercies. Therefore it is for us now to consider how to protect ourselves and our property from the unscrupulous activities of this tribunal. You are the principal New Christian citizens of Seville; you are wealthy, not only in property, but also in the goodwill of the people, who trust and respect, and at need will follow, you. If nothing less will serve, we must have recourse to arms; and so that we are resolute and united, my friends, we shall prevail against the inquisitors."
Within the alcove, Don Rodrigo felt his skin roughening with horror at this speech, which breathed sedition not only against the Sovereigns, but against the very Church. And with his horror was blent a certain increase of fear. If his situation had been perilous before, it was tenfold more dangerous now. Discovery, since he had overheard this treason, must mean his certain death. And Isabella, realizing the same to the exclusion of all else, clutched his arm and cowered against him in the dark.