"I go," he continued, after a pause. "Yet, once more, I charge thee choose; accept the terms I proffer--be mine--and thou art saved from all further torture thyself, and Stanley lives. Refuse, and the English minion dies; and when thou and I next meet, it will be where torture and executioners wait but my nod to inflict such suffering that thou wilt die a thousand deaths in every pang. And, Jewess--unbeliever as thou art--who will dare believe it more than public justice, or accuse me of other than the zeal, which the service of Christ demands? Choose, and quickly--wilt thou accept my proffers, and be mine? Thou must, at last. What avails this idle folly of tempting torture first?" "Thou mayest kill my body, but thou canst not pollute my soul," was the instant reply, and its tones were unchanged. "And as for Stanley, his life or death is not in thine hands; but if it were, I could not--nay, thus I _would_ not--save him. I reject thy proffers, as I scorn thyself. Now leave me--I have chosen!" Don Luis did not reply, but Marie beheld his cheek grow livid, and the foam actually gather on his lip; but the calm and holy gaze she had fixed upon him, as he spoke, quailed not, nor changed. The invisible door of her cell closed with a deep, sullen sound, as if her tormentor had thus, in some measure, given vent to the unutterable fury shaking his soul to its centre; and Marie was alone. She stood for many, many minutes, in the fearful dread of his return; and then she raised her hand to her brow, and her lip blanched and quivered, and, with a long, gasping breath, she sunk down upon the cold floor--all the heroine lost in an agonized burst of tears. CHAPTER XXV. "Hovers the steel above his head, Suspended by a spider thread: On, on! a life hangs on thy speed; With lightning wing the gallant steed! Buoy the full heart up! It will sink If it but pause to feel and think. There is no time to dread his fate: No thought but one--too late, too late!" MS.