ed for a moment from his view, and his senses were alive
only to more humane sentiments.

Gomez Arias no longer loved Theodora; but still when he saw the extent
of her misery, and felt her warm tears inundating his bosom, pity
partially supplied the place of his departed affection. He took the
passive hand of Theodora, and gently pressed it between his own--and
happy--happy was at that moment his innocent victim at this solitary
mark of kindness. It was like a healing balm to her lacerated soul; but
too soon she discovered--for what, alas! can escape the acute
penetration of a loving woman--she soon discovered that pity alone
suggested the consoling token--pity which might alike have been excited
by any other object of distress; and, oh! how little does the sedate
voice of pity satisfy the craving bosom of one who had such claims to
command unbounded love!

Theodora fixed her eyes on her lover, not in anger but in sorrow, and,
in a thrilling and piteous voice, she exclaimed--

"I know you no longer love me; but, Oh! heavens! have I deserved this
from you, Lope? Your vows I will not recall, for who can forget them?
They are deeply engraven in my heart, and I believed them true,--I loved
you, Lope--Oh! I loved you as never woman loved before, and how was such
affection requited? Alas! had I suffered the most terrible of deaths, it
had been kind compared with thy desertion."

"Yes, Theodora," said Gomez Arias, "your reproaches are just; for well I
deserve the most bitter that language can invent; but I was compelled to
that necessity by obligations so imperative, so sacred, that they may
serve to explain, and perhaps, in some measure, to extenuate the
disgrace, which my heart tells me I have so justly incurred."

"Oh!" cried Theodora, "could aught in earth oblige you to abandon one
linked to you by the dearest of ties?"

"It was the consequence of former guilt," replied Don Lope. "Theodora, I
will deal frankly by you,--nay tremble not at the intelligence which I
must disclose, for it is now imperiously required.--Curse me, Theodora,"
he then added with emotion, "curse the man who has accomplished your
ruin. When I courted your affections; when I sought your innocent
caresses, then--then, alas! I was the betrayer; for it was then that I
deceived your unsuspecting heart."

"Oh! Heavens!" shrieked Theodora, "you never loved me then!"

"Yes, I adored you,--I loved you truly,--passionately, but it was my
very love that