was a miniature of himself, which he had given
her in the bud of his affection. At last he brazened out an assurance
that, however like, it was not his; that he could not tell how young
ladies obtained miniature pictures; that, if the Rabbi would look, he
would observe the hair and eyes to be much lighter.

"Man!" exclaimed the Rabbi, fixing his keen black eye upon Burrell,
"away from before me! Guilt and falsehood are on your lip. Your eye, the
eye of the proud Christian, quails before the gaze of the despoiled and
despised Jew; were you innocent, you would stand firm as I do now, erect
in your Maker's image. Do you not tremble lest God's own lightnings
blast you? Did you ever read, and reading believe, the Christian story
of Ananias and Sapphira!"

If Burrell had possessed an atom of human feeling, he would have sunk
abashed to the earth, and entreated the forgiveness of the Rabbi, whose
flashing eyes and extended features glared and swelled with indignation;
but the only two emotions that at the time contended within him were
cowardice and pride. Had he the power, gladly would he have struck the
Jew to death, as a punishment for what he deemed his insolence; but he
feared the protecting and avenging hand of Cromwell, who never resigned
a cherished purpose or a cherished person, and whose esteem for the
learned Rabbi was perfectly known, and much talked of about the court.

"You cannot avoid crediting me for meekness, Ben Israel," he said,
without, however, raising his eyes from the ground (for his blood boiled
in his veins, though he spoke in a gentle tone); "you have come into my
house, rated me upon a foul charge, and will not permit me to speak in
my own defence. Take a cup of this wine, and then I will hear, if you
can adduce it, further proof than that false portrait."

The Rabbi touched not the proffered beverage, but withdrew from his vest
sundry letters, which he unfolded with a trembling hand: they were the
communications he had received from the Polish Jew, with whose family at
Paris his daughter had remained. He stated Burrell's extraordinary
attention to Zillah, during his residence abroad--the frequent letters
that passed between them under pretence of a correspondence with her
father--her having received others from England since Burrell's
return--her total change of manner--and, finally, her having quitted his
house, and his being unable to discover where she had gone. Strong
suspicions were added t