tion, I forget what is due to me and thee. Think not that my
love is only the brute and insensate feeling of the progenitor to the
offspring: I love thee for thy mother's sake--I love thee for thine
own--I love thee yet more for the sake of Israel. If thou perish, if
thou art lost to us, thou, the last daughter of the house of Issachar,
then the haughtiest family of God's great people is extinct."

Here Inez appeared at the door, but withdrew, at the impatient
and lordly gesture of Almamen, who, without further heed of the
interruption, resumed:

"I look to thee, and thy seed, for the regeneration which I once
trusted, fool that I was, mine own day might see effected. Let this
pass. Thou art under the roof of the Nazarene. I will not believe that
the arts we have resisted against fire and sword can prevail with thee.
But, if I err, awful will be the penalty! Could I once know that thou
hadst forsaken thy ancestral creed, though warrior and priest stood by
thee, though thousands and ten thousands were by thy right hand, this
steel should save the race of Issachar from dishonour. Beware! Thou
weepest; but, child, I warn, not threaten. God be with thee!"

He wrung the cold hand of his child, turned to the door, and, after such
disguise as the brief time allowed him could afford, quitted the castle
with his Spanish guide, who, accustomed to the benevolence of his
mistress, obeyed her injunction without wonder, though not without
suspicion.

The third part of an hour had scarcely elapsed, and the sun was yet on
the mountain-tops, when Isabel arrived. She came to announce that
the outbreaks of the Moorish towns in the vicinity rendered the
half-fortified castle of her friend no longer a secure abode; and she
honoured the Spanish lady with a command to accompany her, with her
female suite, to the camp of Ferdinand.

Leila received the intelligence with a kind of stupor. Her interview
with her father, the strong and fearful contests of emotion which that
interview occasioned, left her senses faint and dizzy; and when she
found herself, by the twilight star, once more with the train of
Isabel, the only feeling that stirred actively through her stunned and
bewildered mind, was, that the hand of Providence conducted her from a
temptation that, the Reader of all hearts knew, the daughter and woman
would have been too feeble to resist.

On the fifth day from his departure, Almamen returned to find the castle
deserted, and his