“My child!”
Maria came slowly to him, fell on her knees at his feet, and raising her face wet with tears, asked in a voice scarcely audible:
“Do you still love me?”
“Child!”
“Then—protect my father and make him break off my marriage.” And she told him of her last interview with Ibarra, omitting everything about the secret of her birth.
Father Dámaso could scarcely believe what he heard. She was talking calmly now, without tears.
“So long as he lived,” she went on, “I could struggle, I could hope, I had confidence; I wished to live to hear about him; but now—that they have killed him, I have no longer any reason to live and suffer.”
“And—Linares——”
“If he had lived, I might have married—for my father’s sake; but now that he is dead, I want the convent—or the grave.”
“You loved him so?” stammered Father Dámaso. Maria did not reply. The father bent his head on his breast.