I left you.

ORDONIO (aside).

pang!

I am unworthy of thy love, Teresa,
Of that unearthly smile upon those lips,

Which ever smiled on me! Yet do not scorn me-
I lisp'd thy name, ere I had learnt my mother's.

Dear Portrait! rescued from a traitor's keeping, I will not now profane thee, holy Image,

To a dark trick. That worst bad man shall find A picture, which will wake the hell within him, And rouse a fiery whirlwind in his conscience.

ACT III.

SCENE I.

ALVAR.

O high-soul'd maiden! and more dear to me Than suits the Stranger's name!—

I swear to thee

I will uncover all concealed guilt. Doubt, but decide not! Stand ye from the altar. [Here a strain of music is heard from behind the

scene.

ALVAR.

With no irreverent voice or uncouth charm
I call up the Departed!

Soul of Alvar!
Hear our soft suit, and heed my milder spell:
So may the Gates of Paradise, unbarr'd,
Cease thy swift toils! since haply thou art one
Of that innumerable company

Who in broad circle, lovelier than the rainbow,
Girdle this round earth in a dizzy motion,
With noise too vast and constant to be heard:
Fitliest unheard! For oh, ye numberless
And rapid travellers! What ear unstunn'd,

are discovered.

ORDONIO.

This was too melancholy, father.

VALDEZ.

Nay,

My Alvar loved sad music from a child.
Once he was lost; and after weary search
We found him in an open place in the wood,
To which spot he had follow'd a blind boy,
Who breathed into a pipe of sycamore

Some strangely moving notes: and these, he said,
Were taught him in a dream. Him we first saw
Stretch'd on the broad top of a sunny heath-bank:
And lower down poor Alvar, fast asleep,

His head upon the blind boy's dog. It pleased me
To mark how he had fasten'd round the pipe
A silver toy his grandam had late given him.
Methinks I see him now as he then look'd-
Even so-He had outgrown his infant dress,
Yet still he wore it

ALVAR.

My tears must not flow!

I must not clasp his knees, and cry, My father! Enter TERESA, and Attendants.

TERESA.

Lord Valdez, you have ask'd my presence here, And I submit; but (Heaven bear witness for me) My heart approves it not! 'tis mockery.

ORDONIO.

Believe you then no preternatural influence? Believe you not that spirits throng around us?

TERESA.

Say rather that I have imagined it
A possible thing: and it has soothed my soul
As other fancies have; but ne'er seduced me
To traffic with the black and frenzied hope
That the dead hear the voice of witch or wizard.
(TO ALVAR. Stranger, I mourn and blush to see you

here,

The rushing of your congregated wings?

[Music.

Even now your living wheel turns o'er my head!
[Music expressive of the movements and images
that follow.

Ye, as ye pass, toss high the desert sands,
That roar and whiten, like a burst of waters,
A sweet appearance, but a dread illusion

To the parch'd caravan that roams by night!
And ye build upon the becalmed waves
That whirling pillar, which from Earth to Heaven
Stands vast, and moves in blackness! Ye too split
The ice mount! and with fragments many and huge
Tempest the new-thaw'd sea, whose sudden gulfs
Suck in, perchance, some Lapland wizard skiff!
Then round and round the whirlpool's marge ye
dance,

Till from the blue swoln Corse the Soul toils out,
And joins your mighty Army.

[Here behind the scenes a voice sings the three
words, "Hear, sweet Spirit."

Soul of Alvar!
Hear the mild spell, and tempt no blacker Charm!
By sighs unquiet, and the sickly pang
Of a half dead, yet still undying Hope,
Pass visible before our mortal sense!

So shall the Church's cleansing rites be thine,
Her knells and masses that redeem the Dead!

SONG

Behind the Scenes, accompanied by the same Instru ment as before.

Hear, sweet spirit, hear the spell,
Lest a blacker charm compel!
So shall the midnight breezes swell
With thy deep long-lingering knell.

And at evening evermore,

In a Chapel on the shore,

Shall the Chanters sad and saintly, Yellow tapers burning faintly,

Hush! who comes here? The wizard Moor's employer!

Moors were his murderers, you say? Saints shield us From wicked thoughts [VALDEZ moves towards the back of the stage to meet ORDONIO, and during the concluding lines of TERESA's speech appears as eagerly conversing with him.

Is Alvar dead? what then? The nuptial rites and funeral shall be one! Here's no abiding-place for thee, Teresa.Away! they see me not-Thou seest me, Alvar! To thee I bend my course. But first one question, One question to Ordonio.-My limbs trembleThere I may sit unmark'd-a moment will restore me. [Retires out of sight.

Why-why, what ails you now?

ORDONIO (confused).

Me? what ails me?

A pricking of the blood-It might have happen'd At any other time.-Why scan you me?

VALDEZ

His speech about the corse, and stabs and murderers,
Bore reference to the assassins-
ORDONIO.

The traitor, Isidore!

Duped! duped! duped! [A pause; then wildly. I tell thee, my dear father!

I am most glad of this.

VALDEZ (confused). True-Sorcery

Merits its doom; and this perchance may guide us
To the discovery of the murderers.

I have their statures and their several faces
So present to me, that but once to meet them
Would be to recognize.

ORDONIO.

Yes! yes! we recognize them I was benumb'd, and stagger'd up and down Through darkness without light-dark-dark-dark! My flesh crept chill, my limbs felt manacled, As had a snake coil'd round them!-Now 't is sun

shine,

And the blood dances freely through its channels! [Turns off abruptly; then to himself

This is my virtuous, grateful Isidore!

[Then mimicking ISIDORE's manner and voice. "A common trick of gratitude, my Lord!" Oh Gratitude! a dagger would dissect His "own full heart"-'t were good to see its color.

VALDEZ.

These magic sights! O that I ne'er had yielded,
To your entreaties! Neither had I yielded,
But that in spite of your own seeming faith
I held it for some innocent stratagem,
Which Love had prompted, to remove the doubts
Of wild Teresa-by fancies quelling fancies!

ORDONIO (in a slow voice, as reasoning to himself.) Love! Love! and then we hate! and what? and

wherefore?

Hatred and Love! Fancies opposed by fancies!
What, if one reptile sting another reptile!
Where is the crime? The goodly face of Nature
Hath one disfeaturing stain the less upon it.
Are we not all predestined Transiency,
And cold Dishonor? Grant it, that this hand
Had given a morsel to the hungry worms
Somewhat too early-Where's the crime of this?
That this must needs bring on the idiocy
Of moist-eyed Penitence 't is like a dream!

VALDEZ.

[Averting himself

The mine is undermined! Blood! Blood! Blood!
They thirst for thy blood! thy blood, Ordonio!
[A pause.

The hunt is up! and in the midnight wood,
With lights to dazzle and with nets they seek
A timid prey and lo! the tiger's eye

VALDEZ (to TERESA).

Pity him! soothe him! disenchant his spirit! These supernatural shows, this strange disclosure, And this too fond affection, which still broods O'er Alvar's fate, and still burns to avenge itThese, struggling with his hopeless love for you, Distemper him, and give reality

To the creatures of his fancy

To Isidore I will dispatch a message,
And lure him to the cavern! ay, that cavern!
He cannot fail to find it. Thither I'll lure him,
Whence he shall never, never more return!
[Looks through the side window.
A rim of the sun lies yet upon the sea,
And now 't is gone! All shall be done to-night.

[Erit

ACT IV.

SCENE I.

A cavern, dark, except where a gleam of moonlight is seen on one side at the further end of it; supposed to be cast on it from a crevice in a part of the cavern out of sight. ISIDORE alone, an extinguished torch in his hand.

ISIDORE.

Faith 'twas a moving letter-very moving!
'His life in danger, no place safe but this!
Twas his turn now to talk of gratitude."
And yet but no! there can't be such a villain.
It cannot be !

Thanks to that little crevice, Which lets the moonlight in! I'll go and sit by it. To peep at a tree, or see a he-goat's beard, Or hear a cow or two breathe loud in their sleepAny thing but this crash of water-drops! These dull abortive sounds that fret the silence With puny thwartings and mock opposition! So beats the death-watch to a dead man's ear. [He goes out of sight, opposite to the patch of moonlight: returns after a minute's elapse, in an ecstasy of fear.

A hellish pit! The very same I dreamt of!
I was just in-and those damn'd fingers of ice
Which clutch'd my hair up! Ha!-what's that-it
moved.

[ISIDORE stands staring at another recess in
the cavern. In the mean time ORDONIO en-
ters with a torch, and halloos to ISIDORE.

ISIDORE.

I swear that I saw something moving there! The moonshine came and went like a flash of lightning

I swear, I saw it move.

But first permit me! [Lights his torch at ORDONIO's, and while lighting it. (A lighted torch in the hand, Is no unpleasant object here one's breath Floats round the flame, and makes as many colors As the thin clouds that travel near the moon.)

You see that crevice there?

My torch extinguish'd by these water drops,

Beside (you'll smile, my Lord), but true it is,
My last night's sleep was very sorely haunted
By what had pass'd between us in the morning.
O sleep of horrors! Now run down and stared at
By Forms so hideous that they mock remembrance-
Now seeing nothing and imagining nothing,
But only being afraid-stifled with Fear!
While every goodly or familiar form

Had a strange power of breathing terror round me!
I saw you in a thousand fearful shapes;
And, I entreat your lordship to believe me,
In my last dream-

ORDONIO. Well? ISIDORE.

I was in the act

Of falling down that chasm, when Alhadra Waked me: she heard my heart beat.

ORDONIO.

I stept in to it, meaning to sit there;

But scarcely had I measured twenty paces-
My body bending forward, yea, overbalanced
Almost beyond recoil, on the dim brink

Of a huge chasm I stept. The shadowy moonshine
Filling the Void, so counterfeited Substance,

ISIDORE.

Strange enough!