back, "not that--anything but
that! I cannot--I will not--anything but that!"

"Then there is, I fear greatly, no other way!"

"None?"

"Your soul is the Church's--your body the King's," said the Jesuit;
"take care that you offend not both. For such there is no forgiveness,
even in the grave. Besides, you could never get a dispensation to marry
a heretic. Trust me, my way is the best."

"She would return to the Faith," said Raphael, who, though a man of no
half measures in his own plottings, yet stood aghast and horrified at
what the smiling priest proposed to him.

"Never," said Father Mariana; "I know the breed--'proud as a Scot,' say
the French, your friends, who know them best. And in nothing prouder or
more stubborn than in their heresy and hatred of the Wholesome
Discipline of the Church."

"I cannot," said Raphael; "after all, she is my cousin--my near and only
relative."

"If she were the mother who bore you," affirmed the priest, "your duty
would be the same. And moreover (though, indeed, it becomes not me to
press upon you that which should be your first happiness), has it struck
you that you have passed your word to the Senorita Valentine, my
niece----?"

"The Lady Valentine would have nothing to say to me," cried the young
man sharply; "I wed none such!"

"But are you so sure of your Scottish heretic? As for Valentine, when
was a gallant young man discouraged by a woman's first 'No'? You have
much to learn, young man; Valentine la Nina has been well taught. Fear
nothing. Where she gives her hand, her heart will go with it. I have
schooled her myself. She has no will but that of the Gesu--think on it,
my son, and deeply!"

And still smiling gently, the Jesuit went out, leaving Raphael to
meditations singularly unhappy, even for a man who has to choose between
the gallows and marriage with one of two women, neither of whom he
loves.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE SHUT HOUSE IN MONEY STREET

There is a house in the city of Perpignan, in the street called "of the
money," where on a time strange things were done and still stranger
planned. It is the ancient House of the Holy Office, that is to say, of
the Inquisition. In an upper room, after the fatigues of the day, three
priests were seated. One was a dark, thin man, the type of Philip's new
inquisitors, a Torquemada reborn; the second was a little grey-haired
man, with watering reddish eyes, and a small mouth, as if it had been
cut with one blow