color soon
subsided; she murmured to herself, "Why should I blush to own it now?"
and then spoke aloud: "Prince, I trust I have done with the world; and
bitter the pang I feel when you call me back to it. But you merit my
candour; I have loved another; and in that thought, as in an urn, lie
the ashes of all affection. That other is of a different faith. We may
never--never meet again below, but it is a solace to pray that we may
meet above. That solace, and these cloisters, are dearer to me than all
the pomp, all the pleasures, of the world."

The prince sank down, and, covering his face with his hands, groaned
aloud--but made no reply.

"Go, then, Prince of Spain," continued the novice; "son of the noble
Isabel, Leila is not unworthy of her cares. Go, and pursue the great
destinies that await you. And if you forgive--if you still cherish a
thought of--the poor Jewish maiden, soften, alleviate, mitigate,
the wretched and desperate doom that awaits the fallen race she has
abandoned for thy creed."

"Alas, alas!" said the prince, mournfully; "thee alone, perchance, of
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