She had been her own teacher and mistress for
seventeen years, and though naturally gentle and tractable, when
imperious mediocrity attempted to tyrannize over her, she felt a sense
of disdain which she expressed only by profound silence. “Fra Jose, incensed at her obstinacy, and trembling for the loss of his
power over the family, threatened to exclude her from confession, unless
she disclosed to him the secret of that night--“Then I will confess to
God!” said Isidora. Her mother’s importunity she found it more difficult
to resist, for her feminine heart loved all that was feminine even in
its most unattractive shape, and the persecution from that quarter was
alike monotonous and unremitting. “There was a weak but harassing tenacity about Donna Clara, that is the
general adjunct to the female character when it combines intellectual
mediocrity with rigid principle. When she laid siege to a secret, the
garrison might as well capitulate at once.--What she wanted in vigour
and ability, she supplied by a minute and gnawing assiduity. She never
ventured to carry the fort by storm, but her obstinacy blockaded it till
it was forced to surrender. But here even _her_ importunity
failed.--Isidora remained respectfully, but resolutely silent; finding
matters thus desperate, Donna Clara, who had a fine talent for keeping
as well as discovering a secret, agreed with Fra Jose not to utter a
syllable of the business to her father and brother.--“We will show,”
said Donna Clara, with a sagacious and self-approving nod, “that we can
keep a secret as well as she.”--“Right, daughter,” said Fra Jose,
“imitate her in the only point in which you can flatter yourself with
the hope of resemblance. * * * * * * * *

“The secret was, however, soon disclosed. Some months had elapsed, and
the visits of her husband began to give an habitual calm and confidence
to the mind of Isidora. He imperceptibly was exchanging his ferocious
misanthropy for a kind of pensive gloom.--It was like the dark, cold,
but unterrific and comparatively soothing night, that succeeds to a day
of storm and earthquake. The sufferers remember the terrors of the day,
and the still darkness of the night feels to them like a shelter. Isidora gazed on her espoused with delight, when she saw no longer his
withering frown, or more withering smile; and she felt the hope that the
calm purity of female hearts always suggests, that its influence will
one day float over the formless and the void, like the spirit that moved
upon the face of the waters; and that the unbelieving husband may yet be
saved by the believing wife. “These thoughts were her comfort, and it was well she had thoughts to
comfort her, for facts are miserable allies when imagination fights its
battle with despair. On one of those nights that she expected Melmoth,
he found her employed in her usual hymn to the Virgin, which she
accompanied on her lute. “Is it not rather late to sing your vesper hymn
to the Virgin after midnight?” said Melmoth with a ghastly smile. “Her
ear is open at all times, I have been told,” answered Isidora.--“If it
is, then, love,” said Melmoth, vaulting as usual through the casement,
“add a stanza to your hymn in favour of me.”--“Alas!” said Isidora,
dropping her lute, “you do not believe, love, in what the Holy Church
requires.”--“Yes, I do believe, when I listen to you.”--“And only
then?”--“Sing again your hymn to the Virgin.”

“Isidora complied, and watched the effect on the listener. He seemed
affected--he motioned to her to repeat it. “My love,” said Isidora,
“is not this more like the repetition of a theatrical song called
for by an audience, than a hymn which he who listens to loves his
wife better for, because she loves her God.”--“It is a shrewd
question,” said Melmoth, “but why am I in your imagination excluded
from the love of God?”--“Do you ever visit the church,” answered the
anxious Isidora. A profound silence.--“Do you ever receive the Holy
Sacrament?”--Melmoth did not utter a word.--“Have you ever, at my
earnest solicitation, enabled me to announce to my anxious family the
tie that united us?”--No answer.--“And now--that--perhaps--I dare not
utter what I feel! Oh! how shall I appear before eyes that watch me
even now so closely?--what shall I say?--a wife without a husband--a
mother without a father for her child, or one whom a fearful oath has
bound her never to declare! Oh! Melmoth, pity me,--deliver me from this
life of constraint, falsehood, and dissimulation. Claim me as your
wedded wife in the face of my family, and in the face of ruin your
wedded wife will follow--will cling to--will perish with you!” Her
arms clung round him, her cold but heart-wrung tears fell fast on his
cheek, and the imploring arms of woman supplicating for deliverance
in her hour of shame and terror, seldom are twined round us in vain. Melmoth felt the appeal--it was but for a moment. He caught the white
arms extended towards him--he fixed an eager and fearful look of
inquiry on his victim-consort, as he asked--“And is it so?” The pale
and shuddering wife shrunk from his arms at the question--her silence
answered him. The agonies of nature throbbed audibly in his heart. He
said to himself--it is mine--the fruit of affection--the first-born
of the heart and of nature--mine--mine,--and whatever becomes of me,
there shall yet be a human being on earth who traces me in its external
form, and who will be taught to pray for its father, even when its
prayer falls parched and hissing on the fires that burn for ever, like
a wandering drop of dew on the burning sands of the desert! * * * * * *
* * *

“From the period of this communication, Melmoth’s tenderness for his
wife visibly increased. “Heaven only knows the source of that wild fondness with which he
contemplated her, and in which was still mingled something of ferocity. His warm look seemed like the glow of a sultry summer day, whose heat
announces a storm, and compels us by its burning oppression, to look to
the storm almost for relief. “It is not impossible that he looked to some future object of his
fearful experiment--and a being so perfectly in his power as his own
child, might have appeared to him fatally fitted for his purpose--the
quantum of misery, too, necessary to qualify the probationer, it was
always in his own power to inflict. Whatever was his motive, he assumed
as much tenderness as it was possible for him to assume, and spoke of
the approaching event with the anxious interest of a human father. “Soothed by his altered manner, Isidora bore with silent sufferance the
burden of her situation, with all its painful accompaniments of
indisposition and dejection, aggravated by hourly fear and mysterious
secresy. She hoped he would at length reward her by an open and
honourable declaration, but this hope was expressed only in her patient
smiles.