“I was in an underground chamber, the walls of which were lined with skeletons, bottles containing strange misshapen creatures, and other hideous objects.  I shuddered as I looked round.

“‘Why fearest thou these?’ asked a voice.’  Surely the implements of the healing art should cause no terror.’

“I turned and beheld a man immensely old seated at a table.  His eyes, although faded with years, looked keenly at me.

“‘Thou hast escaped from the clutches of the Inquisition?’ he asked me.

“‘Yes,’ I answered.

“‘And when in its prison,’ he continued, leaning forward eagerly, ’didst thou face a tempter who offered thee deliverance at a dreadful price?’

“‘It was so,’ I answered, wondering.

“‘My prayer, then, is granted,’ he said.  ’Christian youth, thou art safe here.  None save mine own Jewish people know of my existence.  And I have employment for thee.’

“He showed me a huge manuscript.

“‘This,’ he said, ’is written in characters that the officers of the Inquisition understand not.  But the time has come for transcribing it, and my own eyes, old with age, are unequal to the labour.  Yet it was necessary that the work should be done by one who has learnt the dread secret.’

“A glance at the manuscript showed me that the language was Spanish, but the characters Greek.  I began to read it, nor did I raise my eyes until the reading was ended.”

III.—­The Romance of Immalee

“The manuscript told how a Spanish merchant had set forth for the East Indies, taking his wife and son with him, and leaving an infant daughter behind.  He prospered, and decided to settle in the East; he sent for his daughter, who came with her nurse.  But their ship was wrecked; the child and the nurse alone escaped, and were stranded on an uninhabited island near the mouth of the Hooghly.  The nurse died; but the child survived, and grew up a wild and beautiful daughter of nature, dwelling in lonely innocence, and revered as a goddess by the natives who watched her from afar.

“To the Island, when Immalee (so she called herself) was growing into pure and lovely womanhood, there came a stranger—­pale-faced, wholly different from the dark-skinned people she had seen from the shores of the island.  She welcomed him with innocent joy.  He came often; he told her of the outer world, of its wickedness and its miseries.  She, too untutored to realise the sinister bitterness of his tone, listened with rapt attention and sympathy.  She loved him.  She told him that he was her all, that she would cling to him wheresoever he went.  He looked at her with stern sorrow; he left her abruptly, nor did he ever visit the island again.

“Immalee was rescued, her origin was discovered, and she became Isidora de Aliaga, the carefully nurtured daughter of prosperous and devout Spanish parents.  The island and the stranger were memories of the past.  Yet one day, in the streets of Madrid, she beheld once more the well-remembered eyes.  Soon afterwards she was visited by the stranger.  How he entered and left her home when he came to her—­and again he came often—­she could not tell.  She feared him, and yet she loved him.