the casket. "I dare not accept a gift of such consequence."
"Yet keep it, lady," returned Rebecca.—"You have power, rank, command, influence; we have wealth, the source both of our strength and weakness; the value of these toys, ten times multiplied, would not influence half so much as your slightest wish. To you, therefore, the gift is of little value—and to me, what I part with is of much less. Let me not think you deem so wretchedly ill of my nation as your commons believe. Think ye that I prize these sparkling fragments of stone above my liberty? or that my father values them in comparison to the honour of his only child? Accept them; lady—to me they are valueless. I will never wear jewels more."
"You are then unhappy," said Rowena, struck with the manner in which Rebecca uttered the last words. "O, remain with us—the counsel of holy men will wean you from your unhappy law, and I will be a sister to you."
"No, lady," answered Rebecca, the same calm melancholy reigning in her soft voice and
