Had not despair completely overmastered the reason of the poor girl,
she would have shrunk from the idea of committing suicide. But misery
had completely, though temporarily, wrecked her intellect. She felt no
horror, no remorse at the deed she was about to commit. With a steady
hand she raised the goblet to her lips, and then drank the fatal
draught, as she supposed it, to the last dregs.

"I must sleep now," she said, with a deep sigh. "I shall never wake
again." And throwing herself, dressed as she was, upon her couch, she
soon fell into a deep slumber.

How long her senses were steeped in oblivion, she could not tell. But
she was awakened by shrill screams, and started to her feet in terror.

"Where am I?" she exclaimed. "Are those the cries of the condemned? Am
I indeed in another world?"

"But louder and louder came the shrieks, and now she recognized the
tones as those of the old duenna. Deeply as the woman had wronged her,
Magdalena's feminine nature could not be insensible to her distress.
She sprang down the stairway, and now stood by the bedside of the
duenna, over which Juanita was already bending.

"What _is_ the matter?" she exclaimed.

"The wine! the wine! the flask of Xeres! the Venetian goblet! I am
poisoned!" cried the old woman, as she writhed in agony.

The truth instantly flashed on the preternaturally-sharpened intellect