Don Luis will take me
from thy very roof again."
"Don Luis!" repeated Isabella, more and more convinced that Marie's
sufferings had injured her brain. "What power can he have, so secret
and so terrible? Marie, thou ravest!"
"Do I rave?" replied the unhappy girl, raising her right hand to her
throbbing brow. "It may be so; perhaps it has all been a dream--a wild
and fearful dream!--and I am awakened from it now; and yet--yet how
can it be; how came my arm thus if it had not been reality--horrible,
agonizing reality!" And as she spoke she removed the covering from
her left arm. Painfully Isabella started: the beautiful limb hung
powerless from wrist to shoulder, a dry and scorched and shrievelled
bone.
"And couldst thou think thy Sovereign would ordain, or even permit,
such suffering?" she exclaimed, after a moment's pause, passing her
arm fondly round Marie, whom she had raised from the ground to a
cushion by her side. "My poor unhappy child, what is this dark
mystery? Who can have dared to injure thee, and call it justice,
zeal--religion, perchance! Mother of Mercy! pardon the profanation of
the word! Try and collect thy thoughts, and tell me all. Who has dared
thus insult our power?"
"Don Luis!--Don Luis!" repeated Marie, clinging like an infant to the
Queen, and shuddering with terror at the very recollection of a power
which she had faced so calmly.
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