“You will not aid me. It is because you are as wax in the hands of that devil, who by the hope of power and position for yourself moulds you to his will. He induced you to pardon the murderers of Aglipay. He persuaded you to have the army seize on our churches. He has you in his house, directing you by flattery and making you a tyrant from your very kindness. My curses on you both! How hard and bitter this fierce world can be! It was my father, my own father, Judge Daft, who delivered his daughter to this fiend. And this man, my father, Bishop Lonzello, betrayed my mother when she was young, so that I came into the world foredoomed to ruin and disgrace. And you, you, Judge Daft, uphold this Jesuit in his villainy and plots and will not hear my prayer.”
The over-wrought girl sank in a heap on the floor, sobbing bitterly. The noise of her last speech had brought several servants on the scene. To them Judge Daft turned and compassionately said:
“Take her to a room, where she may rest.”
“What! A room in this convento?” screamed the girl arising. “Back to the scene of horror? I did not think this of you.”
She was now attacking the servants with nails and fists, pressing her way toward the door. She fought her way to the street, and then ran at her fullest speed, away, anywhere, but away from the convento.
“Poor creature!” cried the Jesuit in tones of the deepest commiseration. “I think there is nothing in all the world sadder than the hallucinations of the insane.”
XIX.
“WHEN DO YOU THINK OF LEAVING?”
“It was a most fortunate turn of affairs that led her to the extremes she went,” said the Jesuit, in reporting Ambrosia’s visit to her father. “Had she stopped short of where she did, an investigation would have been ordered, I feel sure of that.”