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.
Too soon did Marie realize the power of Don Luis to exercise his threatened vengeance! Two days after that terrible interview, she was again dragged to the hall of judgment: the same questions were proposed as before, whether or not she would denounce the secret followers of her own creed, and confess her late husband's real belief; and the same firm answers given.

We shrink in loathing from the delineation of horrible tortures applied to that frail and gentle being--shrink, for we know that such things actually have been; and women--young, lovely, inoffensive as Marie Morales--have endured the same exquisite agony for the same iniquitous purpose! In public, charged to denounce innocent fellow-beings, or suffer; in private--in those dark and fearful cells--exposed to all the horror and terror of such persecution as we have faintly endeavored to describe.

It is no picture of the imagination, delighting to dwell on horrors.

Would that it were! Its parallel will be found, again and again repeated, in the annals--not of the Inquisition alone--but of every European state where the Romanists held sway.
But Marie's prayer for superhuman strength had been heard.

No cry, scarcely a groan, escaped her.