with your oath to our mutual enemy
than you have hitherto given me. Speak, dearest, have you not some yet
unrevealed causes for alarm?"

It was but for a moment that Isora hesitated before she answered with
that quick tone which indicates that we force words against the will.

"Yes, Morton, I _will_ tell you now, though I would not before the event
of this day. On the last day that I saw that fearful man, he said, 'I
warn you, Isora d'Alvarez, that my love is far fiercer than hatred; I
warn you that your bridals with Morton Devereux shall be stained with
blood. Become his wife, and you perish! Yea, though I suffer hell's
tortures forever and forever from that hour, my own hand shall strike
you to the heart!' Morton, these words have thrilled through me again
and again, as if again they were breathed in my very ear; and I have
often started at night and thought the very knife glittered at my
breast. So long as our wedding was concealed, and concealed so closely,
I was enabled to quiet my fears till they scarcely seemed to exist. But
when our nuptials were to be made public, when I knew that they were to
reach the ears of that fierce and unaccountable being, I thought I heard
my doom pronounced. This, mine own love, must excuse your Isora, if she
seemed ungrateful for your generous eagerness to announce our union. And
perhaps she would not have acceded to it so easily as she has done were
it not that, in the first place, she felt it was beneath your wife to
suffer any terror so purely selfish to make her shrink from the proud
happiness of being yours in the light of day; and if she had not felt
[here Isora hid her blushing face in my bosom] that she was fated to
give birth to another, and that the announcement of our wedded love had
become necessary to your honour as to mine!"

Though I was in reality awed even to terror by learning from Isora's lip
so just a cause for her forebodings,--though I shuddered with a horror
surpassing even my wrath, when I heard a threat so breathing of deadly
and determined passions,--yet I concealed my emotions, and only thought
of cheering and comforting Isora. I represented to her how guarded and
vigilant should ever henceforth be the protection of her husband; that
nothing should again separate him from her side; that the extreme malice
and fierce persecution of this man were sufficient even to absolve her
conscience from the oath of concealment she had taken; that I would
procure from