She stared a moment panic-stricken; then snatched it from his
hands, tore it across, and would have torn again, but that he
caught her wrists in a grip of iron to prevent her, with little
regard in that moment for the blood royal in her veins. King
Philip was a stern master, pitiless to blunderers, and Don
Rodrigo knew he never would be forgiven did he suffer that
precious letter to be destroyed.
Overpowered in body and in spirit, she surrendered the fragments
and confessed the letter her own.
"What is the real name of this man, who calls himself a pastry-
cook, and to whom you write in such terms as these?" quoth the
magistrate.
"He is Don Sebastian, King of Portugal." And to that declaration
she added briefly the story of his escape from Alcacer-el-Kebir
and subsequent penitential wanderings.
Don Rodrigo departed, not knowing what to think or believe, but
convinced that it was time he laid the whole matter before King
Philip. His Catholic Majesty was deeply perturbed. He at once
dispatched Don Juan de Llano, the Apostolic Commissary of the
Holy Office to Madrigal to sift the matter, and ordered that Anne
should be solitarily confined in her cell, and her nuns-in-
waiting and servants placed under arrest.
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