m jealousy has taken fierce root, refuses
with reproach and insult, and in the full tide of her passionate reaction
against his tyranny, the news is brought her by Beatriz that Fernan, in
his determination to avoid the duel with Macias on the morrow, which the
Duke, in accordance with knightly usage, has been forced to grant, has
devised means for assassinating his rival in prison. Naturally, her whole
soul is thrown into an effort to save her lover. She bribes his guards.
She sends Beatriz to denounce the treachery of her husband to the Duke,
and, finally, she herself penetrates into the cell of Macias, to warn him
of the fate that threatens him and to persuade him to fly.

It was, indeed, a dramatic moment when the gloom of Macias's cell was
first broken by the glimmer of the hand-lamp, which revealed to the vast
expectant audience the form of Elvira standing on the threshold,
searching the darkness with her shaded eyes; and in the great love scene
which followed the first sharp impression was steadily deepened word by
word and gesture after gesture by the genius of the actress. Elvira finds
Macias in a mood of calm and even joyful waiting for the morrow. His
honour is satisfied; death and battle are before him, and the proud
Castilian is almost at peace. The vision of Elvira's pale beauty and his
quick intuition of the dangers she has run in forcing her way to him
produce a sudden revulsion of feeling towards her, a flood of passionate
reconciliation; he is at her feet once more; he feels that she is true,
that she is his. She, in a frenzy of fear, cannot succeed for all her
efforts in dimming his ecstasy of joy or in awakening him to the
necessity of flight, and at last he even resents her terror for him, her
entreaties that he will forget her and escape.

'Great heaven!' he says, turning from her in despair, 'it was not love,
it was only pity that brought her here.' Then, broken down by the awful
pressure of the situation, her love resists his no longer, but rather she
sees in the full expression of her own heart the only chance of
reconciling him to life, and of persuading him to take thought for his
own safety.

'_Elvira._ See, Macias! these tears--each one is yours, is wept for you!
Oh, if to soften that proud will of yours this hapless woman must needs
open all her weak heart to you, if she must needs tell you that she lives
only in your life and dies in your death, her lip will brace itself even
to that piti