"To be nuns—that is different."
"It is my belief," she observed in a detached manner, as if indulging in a mere surmise, "that Mariquita will be a nun."
"Mariquita! Has she said so?" he demanded sharply.
"Not to me," Sarella replied, quite unconcernedly.
"Nor to me," Gore explained; "nevertheless, I believe it will be so."
"That depends on me," the girl's father asserted with an unpleasant mixture of annoyance and obstinacy. "I intend her to marry."
"Only a Protestant," said Sarella, with a shrewd understanding of Don Joaquin that surprised Gore, "would marry her if she believes she has a vocation to be a nun. I should think a Catholic man would be ashamed to do it. He would expect a judgment on himself and his children."
Don Joaquin was as angry as ever, as savage as ever, but he was startled. Both his companions could see this. Gore was astonished at Sarella's speech, and at her acumen. He had wished to have this interview with Mariquita's father to himself, but already saw that Sarella knew how to conduct it better than he did. She had clearly been quite willing that "the old man" (as he disrespectfully called him in his own mind) should fly out and give way to his fiery temper at once; the more of it went off now, the less would remain for poor Mariquita to endure.
"If I were a Catholic man," Sarella continued cooly, "I should think it profane to make a girl marry me who had given herself to be a nun. I expect the Lord would punish it." She paused meditatively, and then added, "and all who joined in pushing her to it. I know I wouldn't join. I think folks have enough of their own to answer for, without bringing judgments down on their heads for things like that. It won't get me to heaven to help in interfering between Mariquita and her way of getting there."
All the while she spoke, Sarella seemed to be admiring, with her head turned on one side, the prettiness of her left wrist on which was a gold bangle, with a crystal heart dangling from it. Don Joaquin had given her the bangle, and himself admired the heart chiefly because it was crystal and not of diamonds.