“Oh, are you not still my father?”
“Well, my child, what is this vow of which Renzo speaks?”
“It is a vow I made to the Virgin never to marry.”
“But did you forget that you were bound by a previous promise? God, my daughter, accepts of offerings from that which is our own. It is the heart he desires, the will; but you cannot offer the will of another to whom you had pledged yourself.”
“I have done wrong.”
“No, poor child, think not so; I believe the holy Virgin has accepted the intention of your afflicted heart, and has offered it to God for you. But tell me, did you ask the advice of any one about this matter?”
“I did not deem it a sin, or I would have confessed it, and the little good one does, one ought not to mention.”
“Have you no other motive for preventing the fulfilment of your promise to Renzo?”
“As to that——for myself——what motive?—no other,” replied Lucy, with a hesitation which implied any thing rather than uncertainty; and a blush passed over her pale and lovely countenance.
“Do you believe,” resumed the old man, “that God has given the church authority to remit the obligations that man may have contracted to him?”