ee pause and choose.
Fools there are, who dare all personal physical torment, and yet
shrink and quail before the thought of death for a beloved one.
Idiots, who for others, sacrifice themselves; perchance thou wilt be
one of them. Listen, and tremble; or, sacrifice, and save! When in
thy haughty pride, and zenith of thy power, thou didst scorn me, and
bidding me, with galling contempt, go from thy presence as if I were a
loathsome reptile, unworthy even of thy tread, I bade thee beware, and
to myself swore vengeance. And knowest thou how that was accomplished?
Who led thy doting husband where he might hear thine own lips proclaim
thy falsity? Who poisoned the chalice of life, which had been so
sweet, ere it was dashed from his lips by death? Who commanded the
murderer's blow, and the weapon with which it was accomplished? Who
laid the charge of his murder on the foreign minion, and brought thee
in evidence against him? Who but I--even I! And if I have done all
this, thinkest thou to elude my further vengeance? I tell thee, if
thou refuse the grace I proffer, Arthur Stanley dies; accept it, and
he lives!"

"And not at such a price would Arthur Stanley wish, to live," replied
Marie calmly. "He would spurn existence purchased thus."

"Ay, perchance, if he knew it; but be it as thou wilt, he shall know
thou couldst have saved him and refused."

"And thinkest thou he will believe thee? As little as I believed him
my husband's murderer. How little knowest thou the trust of love! He
will not die," she continued emphatically; "his innocence shall save
him--thy crime be known."

"Ay!" replied Garcia, with a sneering laugh. "Give thyself wings as a
bird, and still stone walls will encircle thee; dwindle into thin air,
and gain the outer world, and tell thy tale, and charge Don Luis Garcia
with the deed, and who will believe thee? Thinkest thou I would have
boasted of my triumphant vengeance to aught who could betray me? Why my
very tool, the willing minister of my vengeance--who slew Morales merely
because I bade him--might not live, lest he should be tempted to betray
me; I slew him with my own hand. What sayest thou now--shall Stanley
live, if I say Let him die?"

There was no reply, but he looked in vain for any diminution in the
undaunted resolution which still sustained her.

"I go," he continued, after a pause. "Yet, once more, I charge thee
choose; accept the terms I proffer--be mine--and thou art saved from
all f