“Well, Santiago?” demanded the anxious aunt.
He wiped away a tear and replied by a sigh.
“Speak, for heaven’s sake! What is it?”
“What I all the time feared,” he said at last, conquering his tears. “Everything is lost! Father Dámaso orders me to break the promise of marriage. They all say the same thing, even Father Sibyla. I must shut the doors of my house to him, and—I owe him more than fifty thousand pesos! I told the fathers so, but they wouldn’t take it into account. ‘Which would you rather lose,’ they said, ‘fifty thousand pesos or your soul?’ Ah, St. Anthony, if I had known, if I had known!”
Maria Clara was sobbing.
“Don’t cry, my child,” he said, turning to her; “you aren’t like your mother; she never cried. Father Dámaso told me that a young friend of his is coming from Spain; he intends him for your fiancé——”
Maria Clara stopped her ears.
“But, Santiago, are you mad?” cried Aunt Isabel. “Speak to her of another fiancé now? Do you think your daughter changes them as she does her gloves?”
“I have thought about it, Isabel; but what would you have me do? They threaten me, too, with excommunication.”
“And you do nothing but distress your daughter! Aren’t you the friend of the archbishop? Why don’t you write to him?”