"Not give! not give to me? not to your confessor, whom you surely know to be your friend,--or is he not?"
Laurella nodded.
"Then, child, unburthen your heart. If your reason be a good one, I shall be the very first to uphold you in it. Only you are young, and know so little of the world. A time may come, when you may find cause to regret a chance of happiness, thrown away for some foolish fancy now."
Shyly she threw a furtive glance over to the other end of the boat, where the young boatman sat, rowing fast. His woollen cap was pulled deep down over his eyes; he was gazing far across the water, with averted head, sunk, as it appeared, in his own meditations.
The priest observed her look, and bent his ear down closer.
"You did not know my father?"--she whispered, while a dark look gathered in her eyes.
"Your father, child!--why, your father died when you were ten years old--what can your father, (Heaven rest his soul in Paradise!) have to do with this present perversity of yours?"
"You did not know him, Padre; you did not know that mother's illness was caused by him alone."
"And how?"
"By his ill treatment of her; he beat her, and trampled upon her. I well remember the nights when he came home in his fits of frenzy--she never said a word, and did everything he bid her. Yet he would beat her so, my heart felt like to break. I used to cover up my head, and pretend to be asleep, but I cried all night. And then when he saw her lying on the floor, quite suddenly he would change, and lift her up and kiss her, till she screamed, and said he smothered her. Mother forbade me ever to say a word of this; but it wore her out. And in all these long years since father died, she has never been able to get well again. And if she should soon die, which God forbid! I know who it was that killed her."