not of, till thou
wert lost to him. Why dost thou tremble, daughter? listen, yet! To that
lover, for he was one of high birth, came the monk; to that lover the
monk sold his mission. The monk will have a ready tale, that he was
waylaid amidst the mountains by armed men, and robbed of his letters
to the abbess. The lover took his garb, and he took the letters; and he
hastened hither. Leila! beloved Leila! behold him at thy feet!"

The monk raised his cowl; and, dropping on his knee beside her,
presented to her gaze the features of the Prince of Spain.

"You!" said Leila, averting her countenance, and vainly endeavouring to
extricate the hand which he had seized. "This is indeed cruel. You, the
author of so many sufferings--such calumny--such reproach!"

"I will repair all," said Don Juan, fervently. "I alone, I repeat it,
have the power to set you free. You are no longer a Jewess; you are one
of our faith; there is now no bar upon our loves. Imperious though my
father,--all dark and dread as is this new POWER which he is rashly
erecting in his dominions, the heir of two monarchies is not so poor in
influence and in friends as to be unable to offer the woman of his love
an inviolable shelter alike from priest and despot. Fly with me!--quit
this dreary sepulchre ere the last stone close over thee for ever! I
have horses, I have guards at hand. This night it can be arranged. This
night--oh, bliss!--thou mayest be rendered up to earth and love!"

"Prince," said Leila, who had drawn herself from Juan's grasp during
this address, and who now stood at a little distance erect and proud,
"you tempt me in vain; or, rather you offer me no temptation. I have
made my choice; I abide by it."

"Oh! bethink thee," said the prince, in a voice of real and imploring
anguish; "bethink thee well of the consequences of thy refusal. Thou
canst not see them yet; thine ardour blinds thee. But, when hour
after hour, day after day, year after year, steals on in the
appalling monotony of this sanctified prison; when thou shalt see thy
youth--withering without love--thine age without honour; when thy heart
shall grow as stone within thee, beneath the looks of you icy spectres;
when nothing shall vary the aching dulness of wasted life save a longer
fast or a severer penance: then, then will thy grief be rendered tenfold
by the despairing and remorseful thought, that thine own lips sealed
thine own sentence. Thou mayest think," continued Juan, wit