“Not so easy a task,” replied the Bishop. “A scene like this conjures up the recollection of days gone by and never to return. You—you, Doña Mercia, might have saved me from what I now suffer.”
“You speak strangely, Don Gonzales,” said Doña Mercia. “Why address such words to me? Our feelings are not always under our own control. I know that you offered me your hand, and the cause of my rejecting your offer was that I could not give you what alone would have made my hand of value. I never deceived you, and as soon as I knew your feelings, strove to show you what were mine.”
“Indeed, you did!” exclaimed the Bishop, in a tone of bitterness. “You say truly, too, that we cannot always control our feelings. My rival is no more; and did not the office into which I rashly plunged cut me off from the domestic life I once hoped to enjoy, what happiness might yet be mine!”
“Oh, my lord, let me beg you not to utter such remarks,” said Doña Mercia, in a voice of entreaty. “The past cannot be recalled. God chasteneth whom He loveth. He may have reserved for you more happiness than any earthly prosperity can give.”
A frown passed over the brow of the priest of Rome.
The lady of the mansion, anxious to turn the current of the Bishop’s thoughts, and to put a stop to a conversation which was annoying her—fearing, indeed, from her knowledge of the man, that it might lead to some proposal still more painful and disagreeable—called her young daughter, Leonor de Cisneros, to her. Doña Leonor approached the Bishop with downcast looks.
“You are wonderfully demure now, my pretty maiden,” he remarked in a bantering tone, his countenance brightening, however, for an instant as he spoke to her; “but you were gay and frolicking enough just now, when I entered. How is that?”
“It becomes me to be grave in your presence, my lord,” was the answer.
“But you are generally happy and joyous, are you not?” asked the Bishop.
“Yes, especially when I think of the good and loving Master I desire to serve,” answered the young girl, innocently.