ed, all the causes of
sin against it droned out, she again looked toward the bed. This time
she lifted her glasses and rubbed her eyes; she had seen her niece
raise her handkerchief, as if to wipe away tears.

"Hm!" said she; "hm! the poor child must have fallen asleep during
the sermon." And putting back her glasses on the tip of her nose,
she reflected:

"We shall see if besides not keeping the holy feast days, she has
not honored her father and her mother." And slowly, in a voice more
nasal than ever, she read the fourth commandment.

"What a pure soul!" thought the old lady; "she who is so obedient,
so submissive! I've sinned much more deeply than that, and I've never
been able to really cry!" And she began the fifth commandment with such
enthusiasm that she did not hear the stifled sobs of her niece. It
was only when she stopped after the commentaries on wilful homicide,
that she perceived the groanings of the sinner. Then in a voice that
passed description, and a manner she strove to make menacing, she
finished the commentary, and seeing that Maria had not ceased to weep:

"Cry, my child, cry!" she said, going to her bedside; "the more
you cry the more quickly will God pardon you. Cry, my child, cry;
and beat your breast, but not too hard, for you are ill yet, you know."

But as if grief had need of mystery and solitude, Maria Clara,
finding herself surprised, stopped sobbing little by little and dried
her eyes. Aunt Isabel returned to her reading, but the plaint of her
audience having ceased, she lost her enthusiasm; the second table of
the law made her sleepy, and a yawn broke the nasal monotony.

"No one would have believed it without seeing it," thought the
good woman; "the child sins like a soldier against the first five
commandments, and from the sixth to the tenth not so much as a
peccadillo. That is contrary to the custom of the rest of us. One sees
queer things in these days!" And she lighted a great candle for the
Virgin of Antipolo, and two smaller ones for Our Lady of the Rosary
and Our Lady of the Pillar. The Virgin of Delaroche was excluded from
this illumination: she was to Aunt Isabel an unknown foreigner.

We may not know what passed during the confession in the evening. It
was long, and Aunt Isabel, who at a distance was watching over her
niece, could see that instead of offering his ear to the sick girl,
the curate had his face turned toward her. He went out, pale, with
compressed lips.