Grant, my God, that Pepita may forget me; let her, if it be necessary, love another, and be happy with him!
Can I do more than ask thee this, O my God?
My father knows nothing, suspects nothing; it is better thus.
Farewell for a few days, till we see and embrace each other again.
How changed will you find me! How full of bitterness my heart! How lost my innocence! How bruised and wounded my soul!
II.
PARALIPOMENA.
Here end the letters of Don Luis de Vargas. We should therefore be left in ignorance of the subsequent fortunes of these lovers, and this simple and ardent love-story would have remained without an ending, if one familiar with all the circumstances had not left us the following narrative:
No one in the village found anything strange in the fact of Pepita's being indisposed, or thought, still less, of attributing her indisposition to a cause of which only we, Pepita herself, Don Luis, the reverend dean, and the discreet Antoñona, are thus far cognizant.
They might rather have wondered at the life, of gayety that Pepita had been leading for some time past, at the daily gatherings at her house, and the excursions into the country in which she had joined. That Pepita should return to her habitual seclusion was quite natural.
Her secret and deeply rooted love for Don Luis was hidden from the searching glances of Doña Casilda, of Currito, and of all the other personages of the village of whom mention is made in the letters of Don Luis. Still less could the public know of it. It never entered into the head, of any one—no one imagined for a moment that the theologian, the saint, as they called Don Luis, could become the rival of his father, or could have succeeded where the redoubtable and powerful Don Pedro de Vargas had failed—in winning the heart of the lovely, graceful, coy, and reserved young widow.