She got up, and prepared to return to her own room.
"Hulloa!" she said, "there's the auto. Your father's going off somewhere, and you can get up. Probably he is taking Gore away."
"Is Mr. Gore going away?"
"He'll have to. There's no one here for him to marry except Ginger; but no doubt you want him to become a monk."
"A monk! He hasn't the least idea of such a thing."
"Oh, dear!" sighed Sarella, instantly changing the sigh into a laugh. "How funny you people are who never condescend to see a joke."
"I didn't know," Mariquita confessed meekly, "that you had made one."
CHAPTER XXXI.
Don Joaquin was not yet recovered from his annoyance. As Sarella had perceived, he could not easily condone the defective conduct of those who, owing him obedience, refused to carry out a plan that he had long been meditating. But he had been frightened by the picture she had suggested of Divine judgment, and wondered if the hitches that had occurred in the issue of the dispensation for his marriage had been a hint of them—a threatening of what would happen if he opposed the Heavenly Will concerning his daughter's vocation. It was chiefly because the plan of her marriage had been deliberately adopted by himself, that he was reluctant to abandon it. Her own plan of becoming a nun would, he gradually came to see, suit him quite as well. And presently he became aware that, financially, it would suit him even better. If she "entered Religion," he would have to give her a dowry; but not, he imagined, a large one, five thousand dollars or so, he guessed. Whereas, if she married Gore, he would be expected to give her much more. Besides, her marriage would very likely involve subsequent gifts and expenditure. It would all come out of what he wished to save for the beloved son of whom he was always thinking. As a nun, too, Mariquita would be largely engaged in praying for the soul of her mother, and for his own soul and Sarella's and her brother's.