"What can it be, too wild and strange for thy hair-brained fancy to believe?
Marvellous it must be indeed!" Isabella spoke jestingly, but her heart was not with her words: and Catherine replied with tears starting to her eyes, "Oh, do not speak thus, my liege.

It is indeed no theme for jest." And she continued so rapidly, that to any but the quickened mind of Isabella, her words must have seemed unintelligible.

"They say she is a heretic, royal madam! Nay, worse--a blaspheming unbeliever; that she has refused to take the oath, on plea of not believing in the Holy Catholic Church; that she has insulted, has trampled on the sacred cross! Nor is this all--worse, yet worse; they say she has proclaimed herself a JEWESS!--an abhorred, an unbelieving Jewess!" A general start and loud exclamation of horror was the natural rejoinder to this unlooked-for intelligence; but not from Isabella, whose flashing eyes were still fixed on the young girl's face, as to read in her soul the confirmation of these strange words.

"What dost thou say ?" she said at length, and so slowly, a second might have intervened between each word.

"Speak! let me hear again! A Jewess! Santa Maria! But no; it _cannot_ be.