“And you have now disclosed the whole burden of your spirit?”--“I have, my father.” The priest sat thoughtfully for a considerable time. He then put to her several singular questions relative to Melmoth, which she was wholly unable to answer. They seemed chiefly the result of those impressions of supernatural power and terror, which were every where associated with his image. “My father,” said Isidora, when he had ceased, in a faultering voice, “My father, may I inquire about my unhappy parents?” The priest shook his head, and remained silent. At length, affected by the agony with which she urged her inquiry, he reluctantly said she might guess the effect which the death of their son, and the imprisonment of their daughter in the Inquisition, must have on parents, who were no less eminent for their zeal for the Catholic faith, than for their parental affection. “Are they alive?” said Isidora.--“Spare yourself the pain of further inquiries, daughter,” said the priest, “and be assured, that if the answer was such as could give you comfort, it would not be withheld.” “At this moment a bell was heard to sound in a distant part of the structure. “That bell,” said the priest, “announces that the hour of your examination approaches--farewell, and may the saints be with you.”--“Stay, father,--stay one moment,--but one moment!” cried Isidora, rushing franticly between him and the door. Fra Jose paused. Isidora sunk before him, and, hiding her face with her hands, exclaimed in a voice choaked with agony, “Father, do you think--that I am--lost for ever?”--“Daughter,” said the priest in heavy accents, and in a troubled and doubting spirit, “Daughter,--I have given you what comfort I could--press for no more, lest what I have given (with many struggles of conscience) may be withdrawn. Perhaps you are in a state on which I can form no judgment, and pronounce no sentence. May God be merciful to you, and may the holy tribunal judge you in its mercy also.”--“Yet stay, father--stay one moment--only one moment--only one question more.” As she spoke, she caught her pale and innocent companion from the pallet where it slept, and held it up to the priest. “Father, tell me, _can_ this be the child of a demon?--can it be, this creature that smiles on me--that smiles on you, while you are mustering curses against it?--Oh, holy drops have sprinkled it from your own hand!--Father, you have spoke holy words over it. Father, let them tear me with their pincers, let them roast me on their flames, but will not my child escape--my innocent child, that smiles on you?--Holy father, dear father, look back on my child.” And she crawled after him on her knees, holding up the miserable infant in her arms, whose weak cry and wasted frame, pleaded against the dungeon-life to which its infancy had been doomed.