resist and not sin. The Lord will
protect me.

_June 6th._

Pepita's nurse--now her housekeeper--is, as my father says, a good bag
of wrinkles; she is talkative, gay, and skillful, as few are. She
married the son of Master Cencias, and has inherited from the father
what the son did not inherit--a wonderful facility for the mechanical
arts, with this difference; that while Master Cencias could set the
screw of a wine-press, or repair the wheels of a wagon, or make a plow,
this daughter-in-law of his knows how to make sweetmeats, conserves of
honey, and other dainties. The father-in-law practiced the useful arts,
the daughter-in-law those that have for their object pleasure, though
only innocent, or at least lawful pleasure.

Antonona--for such is her name--is permitted, or assumes, the greatest
familiarity with all the gentry here. She goes in and out of every house
as if it were her own. She says _thou_ to all the young people of
Pepita's age, or four or five years older; she calls them _nino_ and
_nina,_ and treats them as if she had nursed them at her breast.

She behaves toward me with the same familiarity; she comes to visit me,
enters my room unannounced, and has asked me several times already why I
no longer go to see her mistress, and has told me that I am wrong in not
going.

My father, who has no suspicion of the truth, accuses me of
eccentricity; he calls me an owl, and he, too, is determined that I
shall resume my visits to Pepita. Last night I could no longer resist
his repeated importunities, and I went to her house very early, as my
father was about to settle his accounts with the overseer.

Would God I had not gone!

Pepita was alone. When our glances met, when we saluted each other, we
both turned red. We shook hands with timidity and in silence.

I did not press her hand, nor did she press mine, but for a moment we
held them clasped together.

In Pepita's glance, as she looked at me, there was nothing of love;
there was only friendship, sympathy, and a profound sadness.

She had divined the whole of my inward struggle; she was persuaded that
divine love had triumphed in my soul; that my resolution not to love her
was firm and invincible.

She did not venture to complain of me; she had no reason to complain of
me; she knew that right was on my side. A sigh, scarcely perceptible,
that escaped from her dewy, parted lips, revealed to me the depth of her
sorrow.

Her hand still lay in mine;