feet, and raising
her face wet with tears, asked in a voice scarcely audible:

"Do you still love me?"

"Child!"

"Then--protect my father and make him break off my marriage." And
she told him of her last interview with Ibarra, omitting everything
about the secret of her birth.

Father Damaso could scarcely believe what he heard. She was talking
calmly now, without tears.

"So long as he lived," she went on, "I could struggle, I could hope,
I had confidence; I wished to live to hear about him; but now--that
they have killed him, I have no longer any reason to live and suffer."

"And--Linares----"

"If he had lived, I might have married--for my father's sake; but
now that he is dead, I want the convent--or the grave."

"You loved him so?" stammered Father Damaso. Maria did not reply. The
father bent his head on his breast.

"My child," he said at last in a broken voice, "forgive me for
having made you unhappy; I did not know I was doing it! I thought
of your future. How could I let you marry a man of this country, to
see you, later on, an unhappy wife and mother? I set myself with all
my strength to get this love out of your mind, I used all means--for
you, only for you. If you had been his wife, you would have wept for
the unfortunate position of your husband, exposed to all sorts of
dangers, and without defence; a mother, you would have wept for your
children; had you educated them, you would have prepared them a sad
future; they would have become enemies of religion; the gallows or
exile would have been their portion; had you left them in ignorance,
you would have seen them tyrannized over and degraded. I could not
consent to this. That is why I found for you a husband whose children
should command, not obey; punish, not suffer--I knew your childhood's
friend was good, and I liked him, as I did his father; but I hated
them both for your sake, because I love you as one loves a daughter,
because I idolize you--I have no other love; I have seen you grow up,
there isn't an hour in which I do not think of you, you are my one
joy----" And Father Damaso began to cry like a child.

"Then if you love me, do not make me forever miserable; he is dead,
I wish to be a nun."

The old man rested his forehead in his hand.

"A nun, a nun!" he repeated. "You do not know, my child, all that
is hidden behind the walls of a convent, you do not know! I would
a thousand times rather see you unhappy in the world than in the