As sure as this fine peach is in my hand--another, if you
please--and as sure as I shall finish this other glass of Malaga”--here
a long pause attested the fulfilment of the pledge--“so sure”--and
Father Jose turned the inverted glass on the table--“Madonna Isidora
has--has the elements of a Christian in her, however improbable it may
seem to you--I swear it to you by the habit I wear;--for the rest, a
little penance--a----I shall consider of it. And now, daughter, when
your son Don Fernan has finished his siesta,--as there is no reason to
suspect him of retiring to _think_,--please to inform him I am ready to
continue the game of chess which we commenced four months ago. I have
pushed my pawn to the last square but one, and the next step gives me
a queen.”--“Has the game continued so long?” said Donna Clara. “Long!”
repeated the priest, “Aye, and may continue much longer--we have never
played more than three hours a-day on an average.”

“He then retired to sleep, and the evening was passed by the priest and
Don Fernan, in profound silence at their chess--by Donna Clara, in
silence equally profound, at her tapestry--and by Isidora at the
casement, which the intolerable heat had compelled them to leave open,
in gazing at the lustre of the moon, and inhaling the odour of the
tube-rose, and watching the expanding leaves of the night-blowing
cereus. The physical luxuries of her former existence seemed renewed by
these objects. The intense blue of the heavens, and the burning planet
that stood in sole glory in their centre, might have vied with all that
lavish and refulgent opulence of light in which nature arrays an Indian
night. Below, too, there were flowers and fragrance; colours, like
veiled beauty, mellowed, not hid; and dews that hung on every leaf,
trembling and sparkling like the tears of spirits, that wept to take
leave of the flowers. “The breeze, indeed, though redolent of the breath of the orange
blossom, the jasmine, and the rose, had not the rich and balmy odour
that scents the Indian air by night. Ενθα νησον μακαρων Αυραι περιπνεουσιν. “Except this, what was not there that might not renew the delicious
dream of her former existence, and make her believe herself again the
queen of that fairy isle?--One image was wanting--an image whose absence
made that paradise of islands, and all the odorous and flowery luxury of
a moonlight garden in Spain, alike deserts to her. In her heart alone
could she hope to meet that image,--to herself alone did she dare to
repeat his name, and those wild and sweet songs of his country(20) which
he had taught her in his happier moods. And so strange was the contrast
between her former and present existence,--so subdued was she by
constraint and coldness,--so often had she been told that every thing
she did, said, or thought, was wrong,--that she began to yield up the
evidences of her senses, to avoid the perpetual persecutions of teazing
and imperious mediocrity, and considered the appearance of the stranger
as one of those visions that formed the trouble and joy of her dreamy
and illusive existence. (20) Ireland. “I am surprised, sister,” said Fernan, whom Father Jose’s gaining his
queen had put in unusually bad humour--“I am surprised that you never
busy yourself, as young maidens use, at your needle, or in some quaint
niceties of your sex.”--“Or in reading some devout book,” said Donna
Clara, raising her eyes one moment from her tapestry, and then dropping
them again; “there is the legend of that (21)Polish saint, born, like
_her_, in a land of darkness, yet chosen to be a vessel----I have
forgot his name, reverend Father.”--“Check to the king,” said Father
Jose in reply. “You regard nothing but watching a few flowers, or
hanging over your lute, or gazing at the moon,” continued Fernan, vexed
alike at the success of his antagonist and the silence of Isidora. “She
is eminent in alms-deeds and works of charity,” said the good-natured
priest. “I was summoned to a miserable hovel near your villa, Madonna
Clara, to a dying sinner, a beggar rotting on rotten straw!”--“Jesu!”
cried Donna Clara with involuntary horror, “I washed the feet of
thirteen beggars, on my knees in my father’s hall, the week before my
marriage with her honoured father, and I never could abide the sight
of a beggar since.”--“Associations are sometimes indelibly strong,”
said the priest drily;--then he added, “I went as was my duty, but your
daughter was there before me. She had gone uncalled, and was uttering
the sweetest words of consolation from a homily, which a certain poor
priest, who shall be nameless, had lent her from his humble store.”

  (21) I have read the legend of this Polish saint, which is circulated
  in Dublin, and find recorded among the indisputable proofs of his
  vocation, that he infallibly swooned if an indecent expression was
  uttered in his presence--_when in his nurse’s arms!_

“Isidora blushed at this anonymous vanity, while she mildly smiled or
wept at the harassings of Don Fernan, and the heartless austerity of
her mother. “I heard her as I entered the hovel; and, by the habit
I wear, I paused on the threshold with delight. Her first words
were----Check-mate!” he exclaimed, forgetting his homily in his
triumph, and pointing, with appealing eye, and emphatic finger, to the
desperate state of his adversary’s king. “That was a very extraordinary
exclamation!” said the literal Donna Clara, who had never raised her
eyes from her work.--“I did not think my daughter was so fond of chess
as to burst into the house of a dying beggar with such a phrase in her
mouth.”--“It was I said it, Madonna,” said the priest, reverting to his
game, on which he hung with soul and eye intent on his recent victory. “Holy saints!” said Donna Clara, still more and more perplexed, “I
thought the usual phrase on such occasions was _pax vobiscum_, or”----
Before Father Jose could reply, a shriek from Isidora pierced the ears
of every one. All gathered round her in a moment, reinforced by four
female attendants and two pages, whom the unusual sound had summoned
from the antichamber. Isidora had not fainted; she still stood among
them pale as death, speechless, her eye wandering round the groupe that
encircled her, without seeming to distinguish them. But she retained
that presence of mind which never deserts woman where a secret is
to be guarded, and she neither pointed with finger, or glanced with
eye, towards the casement, where the cause of her alarm had presented
itself. Pressed with a thousand questions, she appeared incapable of
answering them, and, declining assistance, leaned against the casement
for support.