realm, whose bounden duty it is to purge away all heresy and misbelief.  I feel that he is right, and, cost what it may, Christ’s dictates must be obeyed.  The years of fraud—­of passing for what thou wert not—­I forgive, for thy noble husband’s sake; but my confessor has told me, and I feel its truth, that if we allow thy return to thy people as thou art now, we permit a continuance of such unnatural unions, encourage fraud, and expose our subjects to the poisonous taint of Jewish blood and unbelief.  A Christian thou must become.  The plan we have decided upon must bring conviction at last; but it will be attended with such long years of mental and physical suffering, that we shrink from the alternative, and only thine own obstinacy will force us to adopt it.”

She paused for above a minute; but though Marie’s very lips had blanched, and her large eyes were fixed in terror on the Queen’s face, there was no answer.

“Thou hast more than once alluded to death,” Isabella continued, her voice growing sterner; “but, though such may be the punishment demanded, we cannot so completely banish regard as to expose thy soul, as well as body, to undying flames.  Thou hast heard, perchance, of holy sisterhoods, who, sacrificing all of earthly joys and earthly ties, devote themselves as the willing brides of Christ, and pass their whole lives in acts of personal penance, mortification, self-denial, and austerity; which to all, save those impelled try this same lofty enthusiasm, would be unendurable.  The convent of St. Ursula is the most strictly rigid and unpitying of this sternly rigid school; and there, if still thou wilt not retract, thou wilt be for life immured, to learn that reverence, that submission, that belief, which thou refusest now.  Ponder well on all the suffering which this sentence must comprise.  It is even to us—­a Christian—­so dreadful, that we would not impose it, could we save thy deluded spirit by any other means.  The Abbess, from the strict and terrible discipline of long years, has conquered every womanly weakness; and to a Jewess placed under her charge, to be brought a penitent to the bosom of the Virgin, is not likely to decrease the severity of treatment and discipline, the portion even of her own.  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.