Maria, do not cry. The Governor General will come. He
will want to see you and your eyes are all inflamed.... Alas! I
was thinking what a happy afternoon I was going to pass.... Without
this misfortune, I would be the happiest of men and all would envy
me.... Calm yourself, my girl. I am more unfortunate than you and I
do not cry. You can have another and better fiance, but I lose fifty
thousand pesos. Ah! Virgin of Antipolo! If I could only have some
luck to-night!"

Noises, detonations, the rumbling of carriages, the galloping of
horses, and a band playing the Marcha Real announced the arrival of
His Excellency, the Governor General of the Philippine Islands. Maria
Clara ran to hide in her bedroom.... Poor girl! Gross hands were
playing with her heart, ignorant of the delicacy of its fibers.

In the meantime, the house filled with people. Loud steps, commands,
and the clanking of sabers and swords resounded on all sides. The
afflicted maiden was half kneeling before an engraving of the Virgin,
a picture representing her in that attitude of painful solitude,
known only to Delaroche, as if she had been surprised on returning
from the sepulchre of her Son. But Maria Clara was not thinking of
the grief of that Mother; she was thinking of her own. With her head
resting on her breast and her hands on the floor, she looked like a
lily bent by the storm. A future, cherished for years in her dreams;
a future whose illusions, born in her infancy and nursed through her
youth, gave form to the cells of her being--that future was now to
be blotted from the mind and heart by a single word!

Maria Clara was as good and as pious a Christian as her aunt. The
thought of an excommunication terrified her. The threat to destroy
the peace of her father demanded that she sacrifice her love. She
felt the entire strength of that affection which until now she had
not known. It was like a river which glides along smoothly; its banks
carpeted with fragrant flowers, its bed formed by fine sand, the wind
scarcely rippling its surface, so quiet and peaceful that you would
say that its waters were dead; until suddenly its channel is pent up,
ragged rocks obstruct its course, and the entangled trunks of trees
form a dike. Then the river roars; it rises up; its waves boil; it
is lashed into foam, beats against the rocks and rushes into the abyss.

She wanted to pray, but who can pray without hope? One prays when
there is hope. When there is none,