“Mother, it is a good thought. My great-uncle will tell you what to do; and my father will not blame you for following his advice. Perhaps even he may offer his home. You are the child of his sister.”
Fray Ignatius walked towards the fire-place and stood rubbing slowly his long, thin hands before the blaze, while the Senora and her daughters discussed this proposal. The half-frantic mother was little inclined to make any further effort to resist the determined will of her old confessor; but the tears of Isabel won from her a promise to see her uncle.
“Then, my daughter, lose no time. I cannot promise you many days in which choice will be left you. Go this afternoon, and to-morrow I will call for your decision.”
It was not a visit that the Senora liked to make. She had deeply offended her uncle by her marriage, and their intercourse had since been of the most ceremonious and infrequent kind. But surely, at this hour, when she was left without any one to advise her steps, he would remember the tie of blood between them.
He received her with more kindness than she had anticipated. His eyes glittered in their deep sockets when she related her extremity and the priest’s proposal, and his small shrunken body quivered with excitement as he answered:
“Saints and angels! Fray Ignatius is right about Santa Anna. We shall see that he will make caps for his soldiers out of the skins of these infidel ingrates. But as for going into the convent, I know not. A miserable marriage you made for yourself, Maria. Pardon, if I say so much! I let the word slip always. I was never one to bite my tongue. I am all old man—very well, come here, you and your daughters, till the days of blood are over. There is room in the house, and a few comforts in it also. I have some power with Santa Anna. He is a great man—a great man! In all his wars, good fortune flies before him.”
He kissed her hands as he opened the door, and then went back to the fire, and bent, muttering, over it: “Giver of good! a true Yturbide; a gentle woman; she is like my sister Mercedes—very like her. These poor women who trust me, as I am a sinner before God, I am unhappy to deceive them.”
Fray Ignatius might have divined his thoughts, for he entered at the moment, and said as he approached him:
“You have done right. The soul must be saved, if all is lost. This is not a time for the friends of the Church and of Mexico to waver. The Church is insulted every day by these foreign heretics—”
“But you are mistaken, father; the Church holds up her head, whatever happens. Even the vice-regal crown is not lost—the Church has cleft it into mitres.”