hed him slowly and fell on her knees at his
feet. Then raising her face, bathed in tears, she said to him in a
low voice, scarcely audible:

"Do you still love me?"

"Child!"

"Then ... protect my father, and break off the marriage!"

Then she related her last interview with Ibarra, omitting the reference
to her birth.

Father Damaso could scarcely believe what he heard.

"While he lived," continued the maiden, "I intended to fight, to wait,
to trust. I wanted to live to hear him spoken of ... but now that they
have killed him, now there is no reason for my living and suffering."

She said this slowly, in a low voice, calmly and without a tear.

"But, you goose; isn't Linares a thousand times better than....?"

"When he was living, I could have married ... I was thinking of fleeing
afterward ... my father wanted nothing more than the relative. Now that
he is dead, no other man will call me his wife.... While he lived,
I could have debased myself and still had the consolation of knowing
that he existed and perhaps was thinking of me. Now that he is dead
... the convent or the tomb."

Her voice had a firmness in its accent which took away Father Damaso's
joy and set him to thinking.

"Did you love him so much as that?" he asked, stammering.

Maria Clara did not reply. Father Damaso bowed his head upon his
breast and remained silent.

"My child!" he exclaimed, his voice breaking. "Forgive me for making
you unhappy without knowing it. I was thinking of your future; I
wanted you to be happy. How could I permit you to marry a native;
how could I see you an unhappy wife and a miserable mother? I could
not get your love out of your head, and I opposed it with all my
strength. All that I have done has been for you, for you alone. If
you had become his wife, you would have wept afterward on account
of the condition of your husband, exposed to all kinds of vengeance,
without any means of defense. As a mother, you would have wept over
the fortune of your sons; if you educated them, you would prepare a
sad future for them, you would have made them enemies of the Church
and would have seen them hanged or exiled; if you left them ignorant,
you would have seen them oppressed and degraded. I could not consent
to it! This is why I sought as a husband for you one who might
make you the happy mother of sons born not to obey but to command,
not to suffer but to punish. I knew that your friend was good from
infancy. I liked