The tumults of these events had naturally spread far and wide over the
castle, reaching the apartments of the Queen who, perceiving the awe
and terror which the raging tempest had excited in her attendants,
though incapable of aught like fear herself, had refrained from
dismissing them as usual. The confusion below seeming to increase with
every moment, naturally excited her surprise; and she commanded one
of her attendants to learn its cause. Already terrified, none seemed
inclined to obey, till a young girl, high spirited, and dauntless
almost as Isabella herself, departed of her own free will, and in a
few minutes returned, pale and trembling, with the dread intelligence,
that Don Ferdinand Morales lay murdered in the hall, and that Arthur
Stanley was his murderer.

Isabella paused not a moment, though the shock was so terrible that
for the minute she became faint and sick, and hastily quitting her
apartments, she entered the great hall at the moment the prisoner was
being borne from it. Stupefied with contending feelings. Ferdinand did
not perceive her entrance. The nobles, drawn together in little knots,
were conversing in low eager tones, or endeavoring to reduce the
tumultuary soldiery to more order; and the Queen moved on unperceived,
till she stood beside the corpse. She neither shrunk from it, nor
paled; but bending over him, murmured in a tone, that from its
startling indication of her unexpected presence, readied the ear of
all--"His poor, _poor_ Marie!"

The effect was electric. Until that moment horror and indignation had
been the predominant feeling; but with those words came the thought
of his young, his beautiful, his treasured wife--the utter, utter
desolation which that fearful death would bring to her; the contrast