elsewhere; yet, one glance on the stern, motionless figure, designated as the Grand Inquisitor, sufficed to bid every drop of blood recede from the prisoner’s heart with human terror, at the very same moment that it endowed the woman with such supernatural fortitude that her very form seemed to dilate, and her large eye and lovely mouth expressed—­if it could be, in such a scene and such an hour—­unutterable scorn.  Antipathy, even as love, will pierce disguise; and that one glance, lit up with almost bewildering light, in the prisoner’s mind, link after link of what had before been impenetrable mystery.  Her husband’s discovery of her former love for Arthur; his murder; the suspicion thrown on Stanley; her own summons as witness against him; her present danger; all, all were traced to one individual, one still working and most guilty passion, which she, in her gentle purity and holy strength, had scorned.  She could not be deceived—­the mystery that surrounded him was solved—­antipathy explained; and Marie’s earthly fate lay in Don Luis Garcia’s hands!  The Grand Inquisitor read in that glance that he was known; and for a brief minute a strange, an incomprehensible sensation, thrilled through him.  It could scarcely have been fear, when one gesture of his hand would destine that frail being to torture, imprisonment, and death; and yet never before in his whole life of wickedness, had he experienced such a feeling as he did at that moment beneath a woman’s holy gaze.  Anger at himself for the sensation, momentary as it was, increased the virulence of other passions; but then was not the hour for their betrayal.  In low, deep tones, he commenced the mockery of a trial.  That her avowal of her faith would elude torture, by at once condemning her to the flames, was disregarded.  She was formally accused of blasphemy and heresy, and threatened with the severest vengeance of the church which she had reviled; but that this case of personal guilt would be mercifully laid aside for the present, for still more important considerations.  Was her late husband, they demanded, of the same blaspheming creed as herself?  And a list of names, comprising some of the highest families of Spain, was read out and laid before her, with the stern command to affix a mark against all who, like herself, had relapsed into the foul heresy of their ancestors—­to do this, or the torture should wring it from her.

But the weakness of humanity had passed; and so calm, so collected, so firm, was the prisoner’s resolute refusal to answer either question, that the familiar to whom she had clung for mercy looked at her with wonder.  Again and again she was questioned; instruments of torture were brought before her—­one of the first and slightest used—­more to terrify than actually to torture, for that was not yet the Grand Inquisitor’s design; and still she was firm, calm, unalterable in her resolution to refuse reply.  And then Don Luis spoke of mercy, which was to consist of imprisonment in solitude and darkness, to allow time for reflection on her final answer—­a concession, he said, in a tone far more terrifying to Marie than even the horrors around her, only granted in consideration of her age and sex.  None opposed the sentence; and she was conducted to a close and narrow cell, in which no light could penetrate save through a narrow chink in the roof.