"Thy thoughts are
not with me this evening."
"With thee, my husband, but not with the Moors," replied the Queen,
faintly smiling. "I confess to a pre-occupied mind; but just now my
heart is so filled with sorrowing sympathy, that I can think but
of individuals, not of nations. In the last council, in which the
question of this Moorish war was agitated, our faithful Morales was
the most eloquent. His impassioned oratory so haunted me, as your
Grace spoke, that I can scarcely now believe it hushed for ever, save
for the too painful witness of its truth."
"His lovely wife thou meanest, Isabel? Poor girl! How fares she?"
"As she has been since that long faint, which even I believed was
death; pale, tearless, silent. Even the seeing of her husband's body,
which I permitted, hoping the sight would break that marble calm,
has had no effect, save to increase, if possible, the rigidity of
suffering. It is for her my present errand."
"For her!" replied the King, surprised. "What can I do for her, apart
from thee?"
"I will answer the question by another, Ferdinand. Is it true that she
must appear as evidence against the murderer in to-morrow's trial?"
"Isabella, this must be," answered the King, earnestly. "There seems
to me no alternative; and yet surely this cannot be so repugnant to
her feelings.
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