Till then, Marie was kept in strict confinement in the palace; but all harsher measures Isabella had resolved to avoid.
This intelligence relieved Stanley's mind of one painful dread, while it unconsciously increased his wish to live.

Marie free! a Catholic! what could come between them then?
Must she not love him, else why seek to save him?
And then again the mystery darkened round her.

A wild suspicion as to the _real reason_ of her having wedded Ferdinand, had flitted across his mind; but the words of Estaban so minutely repeated, seemed to banish it entirely; they alluded but to her husband's forbearing tenderness, felt the more intensely from its being extended by a zealous Catholic to one of a race usually so contemned and hated.

In vain he tried to reconcile the seeming inconsistency of her conduct; his thoughts only became the more confused and painful, till even the remembrance of her self-devotion lost its power to soothe or to allay them.
When Don Felix again visited his prisoner, his countenance was so expressive of consternation, that Stanley had scarcely power to ask what had occurred.

Marie had disappeared from the castle so strangely and mysteriously, that not a trace or clue could be discovered of her path.