Once delivered to her charge,
we interfere no further. Whatever she may command--short of actual
torture, or death--thou must endure. Marie! wilt thou tempt a doom
like this? In mercy to thyself, retract ere it be too late!"
"If I can bear the loss of thy favor, my Sovereign, I can bear this,"
replied Marie, slowly and painfully. "There is more suffering in the
thought, that your Grace's love is lost for ever; that I shall never
see your Highness more; and thou must ever think of me as only a
wretched, feelingless ingrate, than in all the bodily and mental
anguish such a life may bring."
"Marie!" exclaimed Isabella, with an irrepressible burst of natural
feeling. And Marie had darted forwards, and was kneeling at her feet,
and covering her hand with tears and kisses, ere she had power to
forcibly subdue the emotion and speak again.
"This must not be," she said at length; but she did not withdraw the
hand which Marie still convulsively clasped, and, half unconsciously
it seemed, she put back the long, black tresses, which had fallen over
her colorless cheek, looked sadly in that bowed face, and kissed
her brow. "It is the last," she murmured to herself. "It may be
the effects of sorcery--it may be sin; but if I do penance for the
weakness, it must have way.
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