“Donna Clara lowered her spectacles, glanced at the figure of her daughter, who had fallen from her cushion, and lay breathless on the floor, and, after a short pause, replied, “She _has_ fainted. Raise her.--Call for assistance, and apply some cold water, or bear her into the open air. I fear I have lost the mark in the life of this holy saint,” muttered Donna Clara when alone; “this comes of this foolish business of love and marriage. I never loved in my life, thank the saints!--and as to marriage, that is according to the will of God and of our parents.” “The unfortunate Isidora was lifted from the floor, conveyed into the open air, whose breath had the same effect on her still elementary existence, that water was said to have on that of the _ombre pez_, (man-fish), of whom the popular traditions of Barcelona were at that time, and still have been, rife. “She recovered; and sending an apology to Donna Clara for her sudden indisposition, intreated her attendants to leave her, as she wished to be alone. Alone!--that is a word to which those who love annex but one idea,--that of being in society with one who is their all. She wished in this (to her) terrible emergency, to ask counsel of him whose image was ever present to her, and whose voice she heard with the mind’s ear distinctly even in absence. “The crisis was indeed one calculated to try a female heart; and Isidora’s, with its potency of feeling, opposed to utter destitution of judgment and of experience,--its native habits of resolution and self-direction, and its acquired ones of timidity and diffidence almost to despondency,--became the victim of emotions, whose struggle seemed at first to threaten her reason. “Her former independent and instinctive existence revived in her heart at some moments, and suggested to her resolutions wild and desperate, but such as the most timid females have been known, under the pressure of a fearful exigency, to purpose, and even to execute. Then the constraint of her new habits,--the severity of her factitious existence,--and the solemn power of her newly-learned but deeply-felt religion,--made her renounce all thoughts of resistance or opposition, as offences against heaven. “Her former feelings, her new duties, beat in terrible conflict against her heart; and, trembling at the isthmus on which she stood, she felt it, under the influence of opposing tides, narrowing every moment under her feet. “This was a dreadful day to her. She had sufficient time for reflection, but she had within her the conviction that reflection could be of no use,--that the circumstances in which she was placed, not her own thoughts, must decide for her,--and that, situated as she was, mental power was no match for physical.