[Exeunt, carrying Crespo.
ACT III
Scene I.—A Wood near Zalamea. It is dark.
Enter Isabel.
Isab. Oh never, never might the light of day arise and show me to myself in my shame! Oh, fleeting morning star, mightest thou never yield to the dawn that even now presses on thy azure skirts! And thou, great Orb of all, do thou stay down in the cold ocean foam; let night for once advance her trembling empire into thine! For once assert thy voluntary power to hear and pity human misery and prayer, nor hasten up to proclaim the vilest deed that Heaven, in revenge on man, has written on his guilty annals! Alas! even as I speak, thou liftest thy bright, inexorable face above the hills! Oh! horror! What shall I do? whither turn my tottering feet? Back to my own home? and to my aged father, whose only joy it was to see his own spotless honour spotlessly reflected in mine, which now—And yet if I return not, I leave calumny to make my innocence accomplice in my own shame! Oh that I had stayed to be slain by Juan over my slaughtered honour! But I dared not meet his eyes even to die by his hand. Alas!—Hark! What is that noise?
Crespo (within). Oh in pity slay me at once!
Isab. One calling for death like myself?
Cres. Whoever thou art—