erament with its latent but rich hues of
poetry--constituted her amusement and her studies.

But who knows not that a woman's heart finds its fullest occupation
within itself? There lies its real study, and within that narrow orbit,
the mirror of enchanted thought reflects the whole range of earth.
Loneliness and meditation nursed the mood which afterwards, with Isora,
became love itself. But I do not wish now so much to describe her
character as to abridge her brief history. The first English stranger of
the male sex whom her father admitted to her acquaintance was Barnard.
This man was, as I had surmised, connected with him in certain political
intrigues, the exact nature of which she did not know. I continue to
call him by a name which Isora acknowledged was fictitious. He had not,
at first, by actual declaration, betrayed to her his affections: though,
accompanied by a sort of fierceness which early revolted her, they
soon became visible. On the evening in which I had found her stretched
insensible in the garden, and had myself made my first confession of
love, I learned that he had divulged to her his passion and real name;
that her rejection had thrown him into a fierce despair; that he had
accompanied his disclosure with the most terrible threats against me,
for whom he supposed himself rejected, and against the safety of her
father, whom he said a word of his could betray; and her knowledge
of his power to injure us--_us_--yes, Isora then loved me, and then
trembled for my safety! had terrified and overcome her; and that in the
very moment in which my horse's hoofs were heard, and as the alternative
of her non-compliance, the rude suitor swore deadly and sore vengeance
against Alvarez and myself, she yielded to the oath he prescribed to
her,--an oath that she would never reveal the secret he had betrayed to
her, or suffer me to know who was my real rival.

This was all that I could gather from her guarded confidence; he heard
the oath and vanished, and she felt no more till she was in my arms;
then it was that she saw in the love and vengeance of my rival a
barrier against our union; and then it was that her generous fear for me
conquered her attachment, and she renounced me. Their departure from
the cottage so shortly afterwards was at her father's choice and at the
instigation of Barnard, for the furtherance of their political projects;
and it was from Barnard that the money came which repaid my loan to
Alvar