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I never breathed, away from Isora, without trembling for her safety. I trembled lest this Barnard, if so I should still continue to call her persecutor, should again discover and again molest her.
"All leave me," said I, "upon this reverse, all but Isora!" and I thought with renewed satisfaction on the step which was about to insure to her a secure home and an honourable station.
There have been moments when I have seen that face in the glass, and known it not, but started in wild affright, and fancied that I beheld a demon; perhaps in that moment this change was over it. Slowly Isora gazed upon me; slowly blanched into the hues of death grew her cheek and lip; slowly that lip uttered the oath I enjoined.
"What is the matter, dearest?" said I, following her into another apartment: "you seem sad, and your eyes are red with tears, which are not, methinks, entirely the tears of joy at this happy change in your father." "I am marked out for suffering," returned Isora, more keenly than she was wont to speak.
I brought visibly before her glistening and eager eyes the thick copse where hour after hour, in vague verses and still vaguer dreams, I had so often whiled away the day; the old tree which I had climbed to watch the birds in their glad mirth, or to listen unseen to the melancholy sound of the forest deer; the antique gallery and the vast hall which, by the dim twilights, I had paced with a religious awe, and looked upon the pictured forms of my bold fathers, and mused high and ardently upon my destiny to be; the old gray tower which I had consecrated to myself, and the unwitnessed path which led to the yellow beach, and the wide gladness of the solitary sea; the little arbour which my earliest ambition had reared, that looked out upon the joyous flowers and the merry fountain, and, through the ivy and the jessamine, wooed the voice of the bird, and the murmur of the summer bee; and, when I had exhausted my description, I turned to Isora, and said in a lower tone, "And I shall visit these once more, and with you!"
"I do!" answered Isora; "I do know all that I demand of you; I demand of you only to preserve your life." "How," said I, impatiently, "cannot my hand preserve my life? and is it for you, the daughter of a line of warriors, to ask your lover and your husband to shrink from a single foe?" "No, Morton," answered Isora.
My fears lest Isora should again be molested by her persecutor were now pretty well at rest; having no doubt in my own mind as to that persecutor's identity, I imagined that in his new acquisition of wealth and pomp, a boyish and unreturned love would easily be relinquished; and that, perhaps, he would scarcely regret my obtaining the prize himself had sought for, when in my altered fortunes it would be followed by such worldly depreciation.
A few minutes afterwards I felt an inclination to regret that I had not afforded him an opportunity of addressing me. "I might," thought I, "have then taunted him with his persecution of Isora, and defied him to execute those threats against me, in which it is evident, from her apprehensions for my safety, that he indulged." I had not, however, much leisure for these thoughts.
I sought the Spaniard, and told him in confidence that you were a suitor but a suitor upon the most dishonourable terms to his daughter. I told him, moreover, that you had detected his schemes, and, in order to deprive Isora of protection and abate any obstacles arising from her pride, meant to betray him to the Government.
I told him that his best and most prudent, nay, his only chance of safety for Isora and himself was to leave his present home and take refuge in the vast mazes of the metropolis. I told him not to betray to you his knowledge of your criminal intentions, lest it might needlessly exasperate you.
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