“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.”