At the stroke of eight the curtain rose. Ayesha, reclining upon cushions, and wearing all the chains and necklaces the school could boast, listens with rapture to the edifying discourse of Inez, and confesses her readiness to be baptized. Inez gives pious thanks for this conversion, not forgetting to remind the Heavenly powers that it was through her agency it was effected. Into this familiar atmosphere of controversy the sudden return of Zara brings a welcome breath of wickedness and high resolve. Granada is doomed. Her days are numbered. The Spanish army, encamped in splendour, awaits her inevitable fall. Her ruler is weak and vacillating. Her people cry for bread. But Zara's spirit is unbroken. She finds Inez--in whom every virtue and every grace conspire to exasperate--distributing her own portion of food to clamorous beggars, and sweeps her sternly aside: "Dare not again degrade a freeborn Moslem into a recipient of thy Christian charity." She vows that if the city cannot be saved, its fall shall be avenged, and that the proud Queen of Castile shall never enter its gates in triumph. Dark whispers of assassination fill the air. The plot is touching in its simplicity. Inez, a captive of rank, is to be sent as a peace offering to the Spanish lines. Ayesha and Zoraiya (Elizabeth) accompany her as pledges of good faith. Zara, disguised as a serving woman, goes with them,--her soul inflamed with hate, her dagger hidden in her breast. Ayesha is kept in ignorance of the conspiracy; but Zoraiya knows,--knows that the queen is to be murdered, and that her own life will help to pay the penalty. "Does she consent?" whispers a slave to me; to which I proudly answer: "Consent! Ay, gladly. If it be well for Granada that this Spanish queen should die, then Zara's niece, being of Zara's blood, thinks neither of pity nor precaution. She says she deals with the Castilian's life as with her own, and both are forfeited." The scene shifts--by the help of our imagination, for scene-shifters we had none--to Santa Fe, that marvellous camp, more like a city than a battlefield, where the Spaniards lie entrenched. It is an hour of triumph for Inez, and, as might be expected, she bears herself with superlative and maddening sanctity. She is all the Cardinal Virtues rolled into one. To live with the Saints in Heaven Is untold bliss and glory; But to live with the saints on earth Is quite another story. When I--meanly currying favour--beg her to remember that I have ever stood her friend, she replies with proud humility: "I will remember naught that I have seen, or heard, or suffered in Granada; and therein lies your safety."