eve I loved her? Why did my vile lips seek hers with
ardor, and communicate the ardor of an unholy love to hers?

But no; my sin shall not be followed, as its unavoidable consequence, by
another sin!

What has been, has been, and can not be undone; but a repetition of it
may be avoided, shall be avoided in future.

On the 25th, I repeat, I shall depart from here without fail.

The impudent Antonona has just come to see me. I hid this letter from
her, as if it were a crime to write to you.

Antonona remained here only for a moment.

I arose, and remained standing while I spoke to her, that the visit
might be a short one.

During this short visit she gave utterance to a thousand absurdities
that afflict me profoundly. Finally, as she was going away, she
exclaimed, in her half-gypsy jargon:

"Get away, you deceiver! you villain! my curse upon you! You have made
the child sick, and now you are killing her with your subterfuges. May
witches fly away with you, body and bones!"

Having said this, the fiendish woman gave me, in a coarse plebeian
fashion, six or seven ferocious pinches below the shoulders, as if she
would like to tear the skin from my back in strips; and then went away,
looking daggers at me.

I do not complain. I deserve this brutal jest, granting it to be a jest.
I deserve that fiends should tear my flesh with red-hot pincers.

Grant, my God, that Pepita may forget me; let her, if it be necessary,
love another, and be happy with him!

Can I do more than ask thee this, O my God?

My father knows nothing, suspects nothing; it is better thus.

Farewell for a few days, till we see and embrace each other again.

How changed will you find me! How full of bitterness my heart! How lost
my innocence! How bruised and wounded my soul!

II.

PARALIPOMENA.

Here end the letters of Don Luis de Vargas. We should therefore be left
in ignorance of the subsequent fortunes of these lovers, and this simple
and ardent love-story would have remained without an ending, if one
familiar with all the circumstances had not left us the following
narrative:

No one in the village found anything strange in the fact of Pepita's
being indisposed, or thought, still less, of attributing her
indisposition to a cause of which only we, Pepita herself, Don Luis, the
reverend dean, and the discreet Antonona, are thus far cognizant.

They might rather have wondered at the life, of gayety that Pepita had
been leading