d execrations,--I know that my vehemence so overpowered and terrified
her that her mind was scarcely less clouded--less lost, rather--than my
own. At that moment the sound of your horse's hoofs was heard. Isora's
eyes brightened and her mien grew firm. "He comes," she said, "and he
will protect me!" "Hark!" I said, sinking my voice, and, as my drawn
sword flashed in one hand, the other grasped her arm with a savage
force,--"hark, woman!" I said,--and an oath of the blackest fury
accompanied my threats,--"swear that you will never divulge to Morton
Devereux who is his real rival, that you will never declare to him nor
to any one else that the false Barnard and the true Aubrey Devereux
are the same,--swear this, or I swear [and I repeated, with a solemn
vehemence, that dread oath] that I will stay here; that I will confront
my rival; that, the moment he beholds me, I will plunge this sword in
his bosom; and that, before I perish myself, I will hasten to the
town, and will utter there a secret which will send your father to the
gallows: now, your choice?"

Morton, you have often praised, my uncle has often jested at, the
womanish softness of my face. There have been moments when I have seen
that face in the glass, and known it not, but started in wild affright,
and fancied that I beheld a demon; perhaps in that moment this change
was over it. Slowly Isora gazed upon me; slowly blanched into the hues
of death grew her cheek and lip; slowly that lip uttered the oath I
enjoined. I released my gripe, and she fell to the earth suddenly, and
stunned as if struck by lightning. I stayed not to look on what I had
done; I heard your step advance; I fled by a path that led from the
garden to the beach; and I reached my home without retaining a single
recollection of the space I had traversed to attain it.

Despite the night I passed--a night which I will leave you to imagine--I
rose the next morning with a burning interest to learn from you what
had passed after my flight, and with a power, peculiar to the stormiest
passions, of an outward composure while I listened to the recital. I saw
that I was safe; and I heard, with a joy so rapturous that I question
whether even Isora's assent to my love would have given me an equal
transport, that she had rejected you. I uttered some advice to you
commonplace enough: it displeased you, and we separated.

That evening, to my surprise, I was privately visited by Montreuil.
He had some designs