“Pray leave me alone with my spiritual director,” said María in feeble accents, and the husband and doctor at once left the room. There was no further need for science or earthly love.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE BATTLE.
María fixed her eyes on Paoletti’s face with a softened gaze. The circumstances were so solemn that even the good little priest, accustomed as he was to melancholy and emotional scenes, was deeply moved. Controlling himself however, he went up to the bed, and taking the fevered white hand that she held out to him, said with mystical enthusiasm:
“We are alone, my beloved daughter—my sister and friend, whom I love most truly; alone with our spiritual thoughts and sacred fervour. Fear has no place here; joy reigns alone. Arise, pure conscience, fear not; appear in all your brightness, rejoice in your own beauty, and instead of dreading the hour of release look forward to it eagerly. Oh Triumph! do not disguise thyself under a false semblance of defeat.”
María, less eager than usual to swallow the sweet droppings of this mystical honeycomb, was thinking, in fact, of something else. It was with bitterness as well as sadness that she said:
“I have been deceived.”
“With a pious purpose,” replied Paoletti promptly. “The alarming state of your health required the concealment of the painful truth. Forgive me if I too lent myself to the deception which was, as I repeat, a deed of Christian charity. I saw how necessary it was to second your husband’s beneficent plan....”
“And he has kept me, and is keeping me, under that woman’s roof,” she exclaimed, half-choking.