"And canst thou not trust me, Christian though I am?" "Oh no, it is not that. Thou dost not understand, Doucebelle. Thou couldst not enter into my difficulty unless thou wert of my faith. That is the reason. It is not indeed that I mistrust thee." "Hast thou told thy father?" "My father? No! He would be as much horrified to hear that such thoughts had ever entered my head, as the Lady would be if thou wert to tell her thou didst not believe any longer in thy Christ." "Then what canst thou do? Could thy mother help thee, or thy brother?" "My mother would command me to dismiss such ideas from my mind, on pain of her curse. But I cannot dismiss them. And for Delecresse--I think he would stab me if he knew." "What sort of thoughts are they?" "Wilt thou keep my secret, if I tell thee?" "Indeed, I will not utter them without thy leave." Belasez cut off her silk, laid down the armilaus, and clasped both hands round her knee. "When your great festivals draw nigh," she said, "four times in every year, we Israelites are driven into your churches, and forced to listen to a discourse from one of your priests. Until that day, I have never paid any attention to what I deemed blasphemy. I have listened for a moment, but at the first word of error, or the first repetition of one of your sacred names, I have always stopped my ears, and heard no more. But this last Midsummer, when we were driven into Lincoln Cathedral, the new Bishop was in the pulpit. And he spake not like the other priests. I could not stop my ears. Why should I, when he read the words of one of our own prophets, and in the holy tongue, rendering it into French as he went on? And Delecresse said it was correctly translated, for I asked him afterwards. He saw nothing in it different from usual. But it was terrible to me! He read words that I never knew were in our Scriptures--concerning One whom it seemed to me must be--_must_ be, He whom you call Messiah. `As a root out of a dry ground'--`no form nor comeliness'--`no beauty that we should desire Him,'--`despised and rejected of men'--and lastly, `we hid our faces from Him.' For we did, Doucebelle,--we did! I could think of nothing else for a while. For we did not hide them from others. We welcomed Judas of Galilee, and Barchocheba, and many another who rose up in our midst, claiming to be sent of God. But He, who claimed to be The Sent One,--we crucified Him. We did not crucify them. We hid our faces from Him, and from Him alone. And then I heard more words, for the Bishop kept reading on. `We all like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way'--ah, was that not true of the dispersed of Judah?--`and the Lord hath made to meet upon Him the iniquities of us all.' Doucebelle, it was like carrying a lamp into a dark chamber, and beholding every thing in it suddenly illuminated. Was that what it all meant? Was the Bishop