"he was sorry for the Senora, and that he would
have been glad if the sins of her husband could have been set against
the works of supererogation which the saints of his own convent had
amassed."

"But he is an infidel; he believes not in the saints," he muttered;
"then how could they avail him!"

Antonia met him at the door. He said an Ave Maria as he crossed the
threshold, and gave her his hand to kiss. She looked wonderingly in his
face, for unless it was a special visit, he never called so near the
Angelus. Still, it is difficult to throw off a habit of obedience formed
in early youth; and she did not feel as if she could break through the
chill atmosphere of the man and ask: "For what reason have you come,
father?"

A long, shrill shriek from the Senora was the first answer to the
fearful question in her heart. In a few moments she was at her mother's
door. Rachela knelt outside it, telling her rosary. She stolidly
kept her place, and a certain instinct for a moment prevented Antonia
interrupting her. But the passionate words of her mother, blending with
the low, measured tones of the priest, were something far more positive.

"Let me pass you, Rachela. What is the matter with my mother?"

The woman was absorbed in her supplications, and Antonia opened the
door. Isabel followed her. They found themselves in the the{sic}
presence of an angry sorrow that appalled them. The Senora had torn her
lace mantilla into shreds, and they were scattered over the room as she
had flung them from her hands in her frantic walk about it. The large
shell comb that confined her hair was trodden to pieces, and its long
coils had fallen about her face and shoulders. Her bracelets, her chain
of gold, her brooch and rings were scattered on the floor, and she was
standing in the centre of it, like an enraged creature; tearing
her handkerchief into strips, as an emphasis to her passionate
denunciations.

"It serves him right! JESUS! MARIA! JOSEPH! It serves him right! He must
carry arms! HE, TOO! when it was forbidden! I am glad he is arrested!
Oh, Roberto! Roberto!"

"Patience, my daughter! This is the hand of God. What can you do but
submit?"

"What is it, mi madre?" and Isabel put her arms around her mother with
the words mi madre. "Tell Isabel your sorrow."

"Your father is arrested--taken to the Alamo--he will be sent to the
mines. I told him so! I told him so! He would not listen to me! How
wicked he has been!"

"What ha