“This is indeed a strange meeting, Lola.”
“Call me Nina,” said the girl, flushing, “or I shall remember old times, and my Spanish blood will little bear such memories.”
“Where can we talk together, Nina?”
“Come this way, holy father,” said she, with a half-sneering smile. “I suppose a poor girl may receive her confessor in her chamber.”
D'Esmonde walked after her without speaking. While crossing a gallery, she unlocked a door, and admitted him into a small but neatly furnished room.
“Dear Lola,” said the priest, as, taking her hand, he looked affectionately at her,—“I must needs call you by the old name,—what turn of fortune has brought you here?”
“It is a question well becomes you,” said the girl, releasing her hand from his grasp, and drawing herself proudly up. “You cut the bark adrift, and you wonder that it has become a wreck!”
“How this old warmth of temper recalls the past, and how I love you for it, as I grieve over it, Lola; but be calm, and tell me everything, just as you used to tell me years ago.”
“Oh, if I had the same pure heart as then!” cried the girl, passionately. “Oh, if I could but shed tears, as once I did, over each slight transgression, and not have my spirit seared and hardened, as the world has made it!”
“We cannot carry the genial freshness of youth into the ripe years of judgment, Lola. Gifts decay, and others succeed them.”