"You are triste yet," said Elisa Puyrredon, drawing her chair nearer to Marcelino. "Have you some other sorrow than the supposed loss of your friend? You might tell me."
"Think you it is no sorrow to me to see that when my father has the power he is a tyrant, the same as any other Spaniard? In this imprisonment of Don Alfonso he has committed a great injustice. I have been told that years ago this Don Alfonso did him some injury; now that he can he revenges himself, like a Spaniard. I thought him both too good-hearted and too politic to have taken such a false step in times so critical as the present."
"You take great interest in all that concerns Don Alfonso?"
"I think of my father and do not like to hear him accused of tyranny, and to be able to say no word in his defence."
"Magdalen is very unhappy. Have you no sorrow for her. As Doña Josefina said just now, once you were the best of friends together."
"Naturally I am sorry for her, I have done all I can for Don Alfonso for her sake."
"What have you done?"
"I have used all my influence with Asneiros, who has the charge of examining Don Alfonso's papers, to prevail upon him to declare at once what he has found. But he refuses to examine them and says he has simply sealed them up until further orders."
"Have you not spoken to Don Roderigo?"
"How can I go to my father and accuse him to his face of injustice?"