as heard
for a few seconds, and then all was silent.

Morales neither moved nor spoke, and Marie lifted her head to look on
his face in terror. The angry words of Arthur had evidently fallen
either wholly unheeded, or perhaps unheard. There was but one feeling
expressed on those chiseled features, but one thought, but one
conviction; a low, convulsive sob broke from her, and she fainted in
his arms.

CHAPTER XIII.

"Why, when my life on that one hope, cast,
Why didst thou chain my future to her past?
Why not a breath to say she loved before?"

BULWER.

"Oh leave me not! or know
Before thou goest, the heart that wronged thee so
But wrongs no more."

BULWER.

In the first painful moments of awakening sense, Marie was only
conscious of an undefined yet heavy weight on heart and brain; but as
strength returned she started up with a faint cry, and looked wildly
round her. The absence of Morales, the conviction that he had left her
to the care of others, that for the first time he had deserted her
couch of pain, lighted up as by an electric flash the marvellous links
of memory, and the whole of that morning's anguish, every word spoken,
every feeling endured, rushed back upon her with such overwhelming
force as for the moment to deprive her of the little strength she
had regained. Why could she not die? was the despairing thought that
followed. What had she to live for, when it was her ill fate to wreck
the happiness of all who loved her? and yet in that moment of agony
she never seemed to have loved her husband more. It was of him she
thought far more than of Arthur, whose angry words and fatal threat
rung again and again in her ears.

"My Lord had only just left when you recovered consciousness, Senora,"
gently remarked her principal attendant, whose penetration had
discovered the meaning of Marie's imploring look and passive silence,
so far at least that it was Don Ferdinand she sought, and that his
absence pained her. "He tarried till life seemed returning, and then
reluctantly departed for the castle, where he had been summoned, he
said, above an hour before."

"To the castle!" repeated Marie internally. "Ay, he will do his duty,
though his heart be breaking. He will take his place and act his part,
and men will report him calm, wise, collected, active as his wont, and
little dream his wife, his treasured wife, has bowed his lofty spirit
to the dust, and laid low his