Perez assumed an air of simple and innocent surprise, as if he were quite sure that he had said nothing to annoy her, still less to wound her deeply.  He believed that she really loved him and that he could play with her as if his own intelligence far surpassed hers.  In the first matter he was right, but he was very much mistaken in the second.

“I do not understand,” he said.  “If I have done anything to offend you, pray forgive my ignorance, and believe in the unchanging devotion of your most faithful slave.”

His dark eyes became very expressive as he bowed a little, with a graceful gesture of deprecation.  The Princess laughed lightly, but there was still a spark of annoyance in her look.

“Why does Don John not come?” she asked impatiently.  “We should have danced together.  Something must have happened—­can you not find out?”

Others were asking the same question in surprise, for it had been expected that Don John would enter immediately after the supper.  His name was heard from end to end of the hall, in every conversation, wherever two or three persons were talking together.  It was in the air, like his popularity, everywhere and in everything, and the expectation of his coming produced a sort of tension that was felt by every one.  The men grew more witty, the younger women’s eyes brightened, though they constantly glanced towards the door of the state apartments by which Don John should enter, and as the men’s conversation became more brilliant the women paid less attention to it, for there was hardly one of them who did not hope that Don John might notice her before the evening was over,—­there was not one who did not fancy herself a little in love with him, as there was hardly a man there who would not have drawn his sword for him and fought for him with all his heart.  Many, though they dared not say so, secretly wished that some evil might befall Philip, and that he might soon die childless, since he had destroyed his only son and only heir, and that Don John might be King in his stead.  The Princess of Eboli and Perez knew well enough that their plan would be popular, if they could ever bring it to maturity.

The music swelled and softened, and rose again in those swaying strains that inspire an irresistible bodily longing for rhythmical motion, and which have infinite power to call up all manner of thoughts, passionate, gentle, hopeful, regretful, by turns.  In the middle of the hall, more than a hundred dancers moved, swayed, and glided in time with the sound, changed places, and touched hands in the measure, tripped forward and back and sideways, and met and parted again without pause, the colours of their dresses mingling to rich unknown hues in the soft candlelight, as the figure brought many together, and separating into a hundred elements again, when the next steps scattered them again; the jewels in the women’s hair, the clasps of diamonds and precious stones at throat, and shoulder,