"Why was not I made acquainted with this engagement before?"
"I was ignorant of it myself; the marriage had been settled between my father and Don Antonio, without consulting my inclination. Alas! the first intelligence I received, was to bid me prepare for the ceremony, which is to take place immediately.—My dearest Lope," she added with tenderness; "Oh! never again harrow up my feelings, with doubts unworthy of our mutual passion."
She clung to Don Lope's neck, and pressing him with the earnestness of unbounded confidence and love—"Never," she continued, "had Theodora a single thought concealed from you; you, the absolute master of my heart, and the most secret wishes of my soul."
Then in a more composed manner, she proceeded; "It was but this morning that Don Antonio arrived, when my father immediately proceeded to announce the purport of his visit. My amazement at first knew no bounds; I remonstrated on the abruptness of the proposal, and endeavoured, by gentle expostulation, to ward off the threatening blow. But my entreaties, and my tears were in vain. My father, strenuously bent on the accomplishment of his wishes, left me the only option of yielding implicit obedience to his mandates, or passing the rest of my existence in the solitary gloom of a convent. My choice is made; I lose you, Lope;"—and here her anguish almost overpowered her utterance; "I lose you for ever, but your dear image shall be constantly before me in those dark abodes of penitence and woe. Thither must I go, and leave all these dear scenes, and the dearer sight of you, consigned to unrelenting misery. Not humbly, alas! to pray; not to abjure the world; for ah! I cannot abjure that world which contains the fondest object that links me to life. I go not in the humble mood of a repentant sinner, to weep over a guilty life, but in the desponding resolution of a fond woman, eager to keep her faith unbroken to him of her heart's first and only attachment. For you, oh Lope, my tears will flow; you alone will be the theme of my constant meditations—my fervent prayers. In my hopeless solitude, I may perhaps feel one glimpse of consolation;—the idea that you may be happy, and that even in the glittering scenes of ambition, you will sometimes revert to the cheerless abode of Theodora. This will afford me some solace in my affliction. And when the hand of death releases me from my odious chains, your tears will tenderly fall on the grave of her, whose greatest crime was that of loving you too well."
"Theodora!" exclaimed Gomez Arias, moved by the picture she had drawn; "and is this then the only remedy you can devise?"
"What!" cried she eagerly, "is there any other to be found?"
She paused, and gazed on Gomez Arias, with anxious expectation, breathless with hope.
Don Lope, after a momentary lapse, with a chilling coldness, observed—"You do not love me, Theodora!"
"Oh Heavens!" she cried in the hurried accents of terror—"Never, Lope, never utter those killing words;—what do you require of me?—Speak, Gomez Arias, speak: I will do all, to convince you of the sincerity of my affection, and the cruel injustice of your words."
"You must fly then from the abode of parental oppression," calmly replied Don Lope; "and in your lover you shall find that tenderness, which a father denies; nay, start not, these words may perhaps alarm you, yet consider it is our only resource, and that imperious necessity is a law to which we must all submit. In a short time you shall be mine in the face of heaven, and now, you must resolve to follow me."