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Updated: May 5, 2025
As I heard Isora's low voice tremble with the suspense of one who watches over the hourly severing of the affection of Nature and of early years; and as I saw her light step flit by the pillow which she smoothed, and her cheek alternately flush and fade, in watching the wants which she relieved; as I marked her mute, her unwearying tenderness, breaking into a thousand nameless but mighty cares, and pervading like an angel's vigilance every yea, the minutest course into which it flowed, did I not behold her in that sphere in which woman is most lovely, and in which love itself consecrates its admiration and purifies its most ardent desires?
As the first shock of Isora's departure passed away, I began to suspect the purity of her feelings towards me. Might not Gerald the beautiful, the stately, the glittering Gerald have been a successful wooer under the disguised name of Barnard, and /hence/ Isora's confusion when that name was mentioned, and hence the power which its possessor exercised over her?
That was not a time for our hearts to speak audibly to each other; but we felt that they grew closer and closer, and we asked not for the poor eloquence of words. But over this scene let me not linger. One morning, as I was proceeding on foot to Isora's, I perceived on the opposite side of the way Montreuil and Gerald: they were conversing eagerly; they both saw me.
At this news I felt the serpent stir again within me, but I resolved to crush it at the first: I would not even expose myself to the temptation of passing by Isora's house; I went straight in search of my horse; I mounted, and fled resolutely from the scene of my soul's peril.
At last the clouds have rolled from the bright star of your fate: wealth, and pomp, and all that awaits the haughtiest of England's matrons shall be yours." And at these thoughts Fortune seemed to me a gift a thousand times more precious than much as my luxuries prized it it had ever seemed to me before. I drew near and laid my hand upon Isora's shoulder, and kissed her cheek.
I saw that I was safe; and I heard, with a joy so rapturous that I question whether even Isora's assent to my love would have given me an equal transport, that she had rejected you. I uttered some advice to you commonplace enough: it displeased you, and we separated. That evening, to my surprise, I was privately visited by Montreuil.
Though I was in reality awed even to terror by learning from Isora's lip so just a cause for her forebodings, though I shuddered with a horror surpassing even my wrath, when I heard a threat so breathing of deadly and determined passions, yet I concealed my emotions, and only thought of cheering and comforting Isora.
I dashed through the inebriated revellers who obstructed your path, and reached my own lodging, which was close at hand; for the same day on which I learned Isora's change of residence I changed my own in order to be near it. Did I feel joy for my escape? No: I could have gnawed the very flesh from my bones in the agony of my shame.
Isora's whole frame seemed sinking beneath her emotions; she raised her head, and looked hurriedly and fearfully round; my eye followed hers, and I then saw upon the damp ground the recent print of a man's footstep, not my own: and close to the spot where I had found Isora lay a man's glove.
There was nothing in Isora's tale which the reader has not already learned or conjectured. She had left her Andalusian home in her early childhood, but she remembered it well, and lingeringly dwelt over it in description. It was evident that little, in our colder and less genial isle, had attracted her sympathy, or wound itself into her affection.
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