and rejoice that thou hast arrived ere this gay scene has
closed. Yet stay: our lovely hostess hath not yet given thee welcome.
Where is the Senora? Isabella, hast thou spirited her hence? She was
here but now."

"Nay, good my Lord: she has vanished unwittingly," replied Isabella,
as she turned towards the spot where Marie had been standing. "Don
Ferdinand, we must entreat thee to recall her!"

"It needs not, royal Madam: I am here:" and Marie stepped forward from
the deep shade of the falling drapery behind the royal seats which
had concealed her, and stood calmly, almost proudly erect beside the
Queen, the full light falling on her face and form. But there was
little need for light to recognize her: the voice was sufficient; and
even the vivid consciousness of where he stood, the hundred curious
eyes upon him, could not restrain the sudden start--the bewildered
look. Could that be Marie? Could that be the wife of Ferdinand
Morales? If she were the one, how could she be the other, when
scarcely eighteen months previous, she had told him that which, if
it were true, must equally prevent her union with Morales as with
himself? In what were they different save in the vast superiority of
wealth and rank? And in the chaos of bewildering emotions, so trustful
was he in the truth of her he loved, that, against the very evidence
of his own senses, he for the moment disbelieved in the identity
of the wife of Morales with the Marie Henriquez of the Cedar Vale.
Perhaps it was well he did so, for it enabled him to still the
tumultuous throbbing of his every pulse as her voice again sounded in
his ear, saying he was welcome, most welcome as her husband's friend,
and to retire without any apparent emotion to his seat.

He had merely bowed reverentially in reply. In any other person the
silence itself would have caused remark: but for the last three years
Stanley's reserve and silence in the company of women had been such,
that a departure from his general rule even in the present case would
have been more noticed than his silence. Thoughts of painful, almost
chaotic bewilderment indeed, so chased each other across his mind as
to render the scene around him indistinct, the many faces and eager
voices like the phantasma of a dream. But the pride of manhood roused
him from the sickening trance, and urged him to enter into the
details, called for by his companions in arms, of the revolt of the
Sicilians, with even more than usual an