prosecution of some rustic
_amour_, without even reaching London. Aubrey, on the contrary, had
proceeded to the metropolis, sought the suburb in which Alvarez lived,
procured, in order to avoid any probable chance of meeting me, a lodging
in the same obscure quarter, and had renewed his suit to Isora. The
reader is already in possession of the ill success which attended it.
Aubrey had at last confessed his real name to the father. The Spaniard
was dazzled by the prospect of so honourable an alliance for his
daughter. From both came Isora's persecution, but in both was it
resisted. Passing over passages in the manuscript of the most stormy
incoherence and the most gloomy passion, I come to what follows--

I learned then from Desmarais that you had taken away her and the dying
father, that you had placed them in a safe and honourable home. That
man, so implicitly the creature of Montreuil, or rather of his own
interest, with which Montreuil was identified, was easily induced to
betray you also to me,--me whom he imagined, moreover, utterly the
tool of the priest, and of whose torturing interest in this peculiar
disclosure he was not at that time aware. I visited Isora in her new
abode, and again and again she trembled beneath my rage. Then, for
the second time, I attempted force. Ha! ha! Morton, I think I see you
now!--I think I hear your muttered curse! Curse on! When you read this I
shall be beyond your vengeance, beyond human power. And yet I think if
I were mere clay; if I were the mere senseless heap of ashes that
the grave covers; if I were not the thing that must live forever and
forever, far away in unimagined worlds, where nought that has earth's
life can come,--I should tremble beneath the sod as your foot pressed
and your execration rang over it. A second time I attempted force; a
second time I was repulsed by the same means,--by a woman's hand and a
woman's dagger. But I knew that I had one hold over Isora from which,
while she loved you, I could never be driven: I knew that by threatening
your _life_, I could command her will and terrify her into compliance
with my own. I made her reiterate her vow of concealment; and I
discovered, by some words dropping from her fear, that she believed
you already suspected me, and had been withheld by her entreaties from
seeking me out. I questioned her more, and soon perceived that it was
(as indeed I knew before) Gerald whom you suspected, not me; but I did
not tell th