"Say it again--quite as softly, but more tenderly! You must be very much in earnest, you know, but you must not be in the least violent." She laughed again.

"It is like teaching a young lion," she added.

"He may eat you up at any moment, instead of obeying you.

Tell me, you have a little lion that follows you like a dog when you are in your camp, have you not?
You have not told me about him yet.

How did you teach him ?" "I did not try to make him say 'I love you, dear,'" answered Don John, laughing in his turn.
As he spoke a distant sound caught his ear, and the smile vanished from his face, for though he heard only the far off rumbling of a coach in the great court, it recalled him to reality.
"We are playing with life and death," he said suddenly.