e. A few minutes afterwards I
felt an inclination to regret that I had not afforded him an opportunity
of addressing me. "I might," thought I, "have then taunted him with his
persecution of Isora, and defied him to execute those threats against
me, in which it is evident, from her apprehensions for my safety, that
he indulged."

I had not, however, much leisure for these thoughts. When I arrived at
the lodgings of Alvarez, I found that a great change had taken place
in his condition; he had recovered speech, though imperfectly, and
testified a return to sense. I flew upstairs with a light step to
congratulate Isora: she met me at the door. "Hush!" she whispered:
"my father sleeps!" But she did not speak with the animation I had
anticipated.

"What is the matter, dearest?" said I, following her into another
apartment: "you seem sad, and your eyes are red with tears, which are
not, methinks, entirely the tears of joy at this happy change in your
father."

"I am marked out for suffering," returned Isora, more keenly than she
was wont to speak. I pressed her to explain her meaning; she hesitated
at first, but at length confessed that her father had always been
anxious for her marriage with this _soi-disant_ Barnard, and that his
first words on his recovery had been to press her to consent to his
wishes.

"My poor father," said she, weepingly, "speaks and thinks only for my
fancied good; but his senses as yet are only recovered in part, and he
cannot even understand me when I speak of you. 'I shall die,' he
said, 'I shall die, and you will be left on the wide world!' I in vain
endeavoured to explain to him that I should have a protector: he fell
asleep muttering those words, and with tears in his eyes."

"Does he know as much of this Barnard as you do?" said I.

"Heavens, no!--or he would never have pressed me to marry one so
wicked."

"Does he know even who he is?"

"Yes!" said Isora, after a pause; "but he has not known it long."

Here the physician joined us, and taking me aside, informed me that, as
he had foreboded, sleep had been the harbinger of death, and that Don
Diego was no more. I broke the news as gently as I could to Isora:
but her grief was far more violent than I could have anticipated; and
nothing seemed to cut her so deeply to the heart as the thought that his
last wish had been one with which she had not complied, and could never
comply.

I pass over the first days of mourning: I come to the