I will encounter the starched ruffs, and rustling manteaus, and whale-boned fardingales of the females, from your good mother down to the oldest duenna who sits spectacled, and armed with bobbin, on her inaccessible and untempted sopha; and the twirled whiskers, plumed hats, and shouldered capas of all your male relatives. And I will drink chocolate, and strut among them; and when they refer me to your mustachoed man of law, with his thread-bare cloke of black velvet over his shoulder, his long quill in his hand, and his soul in three sheets of wide-spread parchment, I will dower you in the most ample territory ever settled on a bride.”--“Oh let it be, then, in that land of music and sunshine where we first met! One spot where I might set my foot amid its flowers, is worth all the cultivated earth of Europe!” said Isidora.--“No!--it shall be in a territory with which your bearded men of law are far better acquainted, and which even your pious mother and proud family must acknowledge my claim to, when they shall hear it asserted and explained. Perchance they may be joint-tenants with _me_ there; and yet (strange to say!) they will never litigate my exclusive title to possession.”--“I understand nothing of this,” said Isidora; “but I feel I am transgressing the decorums of a Spanish female and a Christian, in holding this conference with you any longer. If you think as you once thought,--if you feel as _I_ must feel for ever,--there needs not this discussion, which only perplexes and terrifies. What have I to do with this territory of which you speak? That _you_ are its possessor, is its only value in my eyes!”--“What have you to do with it?” repeated Melmoth; “Oh, you know not how much you may have to do with it and me yet! In other cases, the possession of the territory is the security for the man,--but here the man is the security for the everlasting possession of the territory. Mine heirs must inherit it for ever and ever, if they hold by my tenure. Listen to me, beautiful Immalee, or Christian, or whatever other name you choose to be called by! Nature, your first sponsor, baptized you with the dews of Indian roses--your Christian sponsors, of course, spared not water, salt, or oil, to wash away the stain of nature from your regenerated frame--and your last sponsor, if you will submit to the rite, will anoint you with a new chrism. But of that hereafter. Listen to me while I announce to you the wealth, the population, the magnificence of that region to which I will endower you. The rulers of the earth are there--all of them. There be the heroes, and the sovereigns, and the tyrants. There are their riches, and pomp, and power--Oh what a glorious accumulation!--and they have thrones, and crowns, and pedestals, and trophies of fire, that burn for ever and ever, and the light of their glory blazes eternally. There are all you read of in story, your Alexanders and Cæsars, your Ptolemies and Pharaohs. There be the princes of the East, the Nimrods,