Once more alone in her cell, Zorilda endeavoured to abstract her mind from the noisy scene. She took out her mother's diamond cross, and having kissed, she pinned it to her breast.
"I will wear you always," said she, "next my heart, but it shall be unseen. When I reach Drumcairn, I will have a ribband and suspend it round my neck. This bracelet, too. These are my jewels, and they are gems of more worth than Potosi's mines could furnish, or Golconda has ever sent forth."
She had laid aside her cloak and veil. Her beautiful hair, which was only restrained by a tortoise-shell comb from falling over her shoulders, curled in rich profusion over her ivory throat and forehead. The air of evening had fanned a rose-bud tint upon her cheek, and a black silk dress which folded across the bosom, formed the simple costume of her, whom only the thickness of a half-inch board concealed from that mirthful multitude, over whom in mingling, she would have reigned queen paramount, in loveliness and grace.
Amongst the papers which lay before her, was the letter which she had picked up in the walk at Henbury, when she had been startled by a rustling in the bushes behind where she sat. The idea struck her as she now looked over it again, with relation to other parts of her history since developed, that a father's care might watch at distance over her destiny. He was an English nobleman, perhaps, nay probably, a married man, and withheld not only by a sense of the wrongs which he had inflicted, but, also by existing family interests, from revealing himself to his injured child. This conjecture was little soothing; on the contrary, a cold tremor ran through her frame at thoughts of him who basely deceived, and then deserted those to whom he was bound by the most powerful ties of nature as well as moral obligation.
"Alas!" said she, "as my father, whoever, or wherever he may be, I owe him reverence; but may I be spared the necessity of paying a tribute which could never be animated by affection! Better remain the unknown, despised 'Who is she?' than obtain a name and place in society at the cost of incurring Heaven's displeasure by violating the first of earthly duties."
As she uttered these words within her heart, her eyes were raised upwards, and her hands clasped in a posture of supplication.
At this instant a heavy crash, as if one of the dancers had fallen with great force against the weak partition, levelled the frail screen, which went to pieces, and came in fragments to the ground.
What a scene was now unveiled! Zorilda narrowly escaped receiving on her head a piece of the timber, which laid the table at which she had been sitting prostrate at her feet, and together with it, the now scattered contents of her sacred packet.
The male part of the assembly rushed simultaneously forward to offer assistance, while, terrified and amazed, our heroine started from her seat, the most beautiful object that had ever graced a ball-room, revealing too
"the sparkling cross she wore,
Which saints might kiss, and infidels adore."