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.
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