must be satisfied, and the heart
of a father cannot deny forgiveness to the poor wretch whose miseries
are far--far superior to her guilt. Oh pity me!--grant me your
pardon--repulse me not thus from your heart, and I will immediately
speed to bury my sufferings and my shame amidst the gloom of a
cloister."

She ceased, and the wildness of her manner, a fitful tremor that shook
her frame, and the unearthly hue that overspread her already pallid
countenance, exhibited in glowing tints the havoc that such deep anguish
had made. Her trembling arms were extended, and the thin cold fingers
clasped in agony; loosely her dishevelled tresses fell on her father's
couch, as in the earnestness of grief she appealed to him for mercy.

Monteblanco looked on her, intensely looked on that harrowing picture of
distress, and felt the burning tears that descended in copious streams
from their swollen springs. The vivid signs of her repentance, and the
excess of her affliction were inconsistent with depravity. Error more
than guilt was there, and Don Manuel could not behold unmoved his once
beloved daughter, the pride and solace of his declining years, reduced
to her present state of utter wretchedness. Dreadful was the conflict
which the noble and high-minded cavalier had to sustain between the
stern dictates of worldly prejudice, and the tender pleadings of nature.
But happily to the father's honour, nature at length prevailed. He was
softened, and in an extacy of mingled grief and affection, he clasped
his sorrowing child in his trembling arms.

Monteblanco appeared now partially relieved from a load of anguish. He
consoled the poor forlorn culprit that pathetically clung to his
protection, and his fondness for the once beautiful and accomplished
Theodora, seemed to return with additional force for the unfortunate
being that stood before him.

But now new feelings took possession of his breast. As he gazed with a
melancholy joy on his restored child--as he considered with the smile of
sadness the mournful devastation which one man's treachery had wrought
there, all his thoughts were forcibly drawn into one predominant idea,
whilst the decaying energies of his frame received a new impulse to
second the resolutions of his working mind. The cold and unnatural
atrocity of Gomez Arias burned in his brain; he felt the agonized throb
of his injury run corrosive through his veins, and impart an
uncontrollable desire of revenge; the fever of