picture she had drawn;
"and is this then the only remedy you can devise?"

"What!" cried she eagerly, "is there any other to be found?"

She paused, and gazed on Gomez Arias, with anxious expectation,
breathless with hope.

Don Lope, after a momentary lapse, with a chilling coldness,
observed--"You do not love me, Theodora!"

"Oh Heavens!" she cried in the hurried accents of terror--"Never, Lope,
never utter those killing words;--what do you require of me?--Speak,
Gomez Arias, speak: I will do all, to convince you of the sincerity of
my affection, and the cruel injustice of your words."

"You must fly then from the abode of parental oppression," calmly
replied Don Lope; "and in your lover you shall find that tenderness,
which a father denies; nay, start not, these words may perhaps alarm
you, yet consider it is our only resource, and that imperious necessity
is a law to which we must all submit. In a short time you shall be mine
in the face of heaven, and now, you must resolve to follow me."

Theodora started at the proposition. She fixed her eyes on Gomez Arias,
and with a deep but tranquil anguish exclaimed--"Alas, Don Lope! Is
this the remedy you propose? Can you indeed tempt me to abandon my
father in his declining years, to regret and shame?"

"You had already determined to abandon him," observed Gomez Arias.

"No, Lope," she replied; "by that step, I should only disappoint him in
his expectations--not incur his merited hatred and malediction;--his
grief would be tempered by resignation, not corroded with the sting of
shame." "Don Lope," she then continued with dignity, "command my life;
but oh! never, never require of me the commission of a crime, as the
proof of my love."

"Stay, Theodora," interrupted Gomez Arias, with a composure that ill
agreed with the terrific cloud gathering on his brow; "stay, you are
right, and I must retract my words: the offer was dictated in the
transports of sincere and ardent love, and as the only means left us in
the hour of danger. But I perceive that I have mistaken your
sentiments; such actions were only made for souls capable of feeling
and appreciating the extent of a true passion; not for cold and timorous
beings like yourself. I flattered my fond pride, that in you I had met
with a miracle of deep and all-absorbing affection, but I am deceived,
and sorely shall I repent my delusion; I now see you in your true
colours; you are like the rest of your feeble sex, please