“But how?” inquired Isabella anxiously.  “Wouldst thou deny her faith to Father Francis, and persuade him she has spoken falsely?”

The King shook his head.  “That will never do, Isabel.  I have had the holy man closeted with me already, insisting on the sanity of her words, and urging me to resign the unbeliever at once to the tender mercy of the church.  All must depend on thee.”

“On me?” repeated Isabella, in a tone of surprised yet anxious inquiry.

“On thee, love.  Thy perfect humility is ignorant of the fact—­yet it is nevertheless perfectly true—­that thou art reverenced, well nigh canonized, by the holy church; and thy words will have weight when mine would be light as air.  Refuse the holy fathers all access to her; say she is unfitted to encounter them; that she is ill; nay, mad, if thou wilt.  Bring forward the state in which she was borne from the hall; her very laugh (by St. Francis, it rings in my ear still) to confirm it, and they will believe thee.  The present excitement will gradually subside, and her very existence be forgotten.  Let none but thy steadiest, most pious matrons have access to her; forbid thy young maidens to approach or hold converse with her; and her being under thy protection can do harm to none.  Let her be prisoner in her own apartments, an thou wilt; she deserves punishment for the deception practised towards thee.  Treat her as thou deemest best, only give her not up to the mercy of the church!”

“Talk not of it,” replied the Queen earnestly.  “Unbeliever though she be, offspring of a race which every true Catholic must hold in abhorrence, she is yet a woman, Ferdinand, and, as such, demands and shall receive the protection of her Queen.  Yet, would there were some means of saving her from the eternal perdition to which, as a Jewess, she is destined; some method, without increase of suffering, to allure her, as a penitent and believing child, to the bosom of our holy mother church.”

“And to do this, who so fitted as thyself, dearest Isabel?” answered the King with earnest affection.  “Thou hast able assistants in some of thy older matrons, and may after a while call in the aid of Father Denis, whose kindly nature is better fitted for gentle conversion than either Francis, or thy still sterner chaplain, Torquemada.  Thy kindness has gained thee the love of this misguided one; and if any one have sufficient influence to convert, by other than sharp means, it can only be thyself.”

Isabella was not long undecided.  Her heart felt that to turn Marie from blindness and perdition by kindness and affection would be indeed far more acceptable to the virgin (her own peculiar saint) than the heretic’s blood, and she answered with animation, “Then so it shall be, Ferdinand; I fear me, alas! that there will be little reason to prevaricate, to deny all spiritual access to her.  Thy report, combined with my terrified Catherine’s, gives me but little hope for health or reason.  But should she indeed recover, trust me she shall be happy yet.”