The recollection of some dark dream seemed now to absorb the senses of the old man. The debility to which sickness had reduced his mental and physical powers, and the overpowering efficacy of a first impression of pleasure and surprise, had entirely banished from his mind the dreadful image of a parent's just indignation. At first he only saw his lost child returned to his arms, nor in that moment of agitation did he recur to the cause of her absconding, to the state in which she returned. All the sensations which might naturally spring in the bosom of an injured cavalier were deadened by the more powerful feelings of a father's love.
But now that the first emotion had subsided, and that the voice of the guilty Theodora sounded distinctly in his ear, the attention of Don Manuel was promptly recalled to images of a painful nature. His daughter's desertion and the misery consequent on this first act of guilt, rushed upon his mind in deepened and aggravated colours. He rudely drew back the hand which the unfortunate Theodora was bathing with her tears, and in a tone of indignant feeling—
"Say," he cried, "art thou come to hasten my departure from a wretched state of existence?—Speak, guilty as thou art; unfold the horrid tale; and when I am doubly cursed, when I have seen thee thus forlorn and blasted by guilt and misfortune, then let me die!"
"Oh my father," she exclaimed with heart-rending emotion, "I am a criminal daughter—a wretch unworthy of the name I bear—yes, I amply merit your wrath and malediction. But oh! in pity do not deny me your forgiveness, for I have drunk deep of sorrow; if my guilt has been great, so have likewise been the tortures that have rent the heart of your child, since the moment of her first transgression."
"Unfold to me those horrors," exclaimed the desolate father, in a frantic tone; "perhaps their disclosure may break my heart, and bestow on me the only comfort I can now expect—yes, speak, and let the last words I hear from my daughter be my passport to the tomb!"
"Father, speak not thus—on me alone let the vengeance of the offended heavens fall—I alone must expiate the guilt, for shame cannot be joined with the name of Monteblanco; but you, oh! father, live—live to support the dignity of that name."
"You have disgraced it," interrupted Don Manuel, "but I will hear tranquilly—ere I deeply curse, I will deliberately examine the extent of your guilt."
He seemed suddenly to acquire a dreadful composure, and Theodora, as soon as her emotion would permit, told in the strains of deepest woe the particulars of her sorrowful history. It was interrupted repeatedly by her disconsolate father: rage, pride, pity, and resentment, by turns swelled his breast, according as the circumstances related excited those different feelings. But when the harrowing recital was finished, his character seemed to assume a tone of energy uncongenial with his present state of malady. Family pride, a sense of degradation and of injury unrevenged, rose paramount in his mind, and stifling for the moment all the pleadings of pity and parental tenderness, he felt an equal degree of horror and resentment against the betrayer and his unfortunate victim.
In the first impulse, therefore, of his rage, Monteblanco fixed his despairing eyes on his daughter, and in a tone of bitterness, enough to break the fibres of her heart, he cried out imperiously—
"Begone from my sight for ever—begone, and let me die in peace—let me descend to my grave without the additional pang which the presence of an ungrateful child inflicts upon me—rise and begone; and may the stings you have planted in this withered heart, and the shame you have heaped on my head, be your companion to the latest moment of your ignominious life."