all thy race, I could have saved from the bigotry that is fast covering
this knightly land like the rising of an irresistible sea--and thou
rejectest me! Take time, at least, to pause--to consider. Let me see
thee again tomorrow."

"No, prince, no--not again! I will keep thy secret only if I see thee no
more. If thou persist in a suit that I feel to be that of sin and shame,
then, indeed, mine honour--"

"Hold!" interrupted Juan, with haughty impatience, "I torment, I harass
you no more. I release you from my importunity. Perhaps already I have
stooped too low." He drew the cowl over his features, and strode
sullenly to the door; but, turning for one last gaze on the form that had
so strangely fascinated a heart capable of generous emotions, the meek
and despondent posture of the novice, her tender youth, her gloomy fate,
melted his momentary pride and resentment. "God bless and reconcile
thee, poor child!" he said, in a voice choked with contending passions--
and the door closed upon his form.

"I thank thee, Heaven, that it was not Muza!" muttered Leila, breaking
from a reverie in which she seemed to be communing with her own soul: "I
feel that I could not have resisted him." With that thought she knelt
down, in humble and penitent self-reproach, and prayed for strength.

Ere she had risen from her supplications, her solitude was again invaded
by Torquemada, the Dominican.

This strange man, though the author of cruelties at which nature recoils,
had some veins of warm and gentle feeling streaking, as it were, the
marble of his hard character; and when he had thoroughly convinced