When Isabella was in her fourteenth year, her father returned to his native country, taking his family with him, having given up his mercantile business, and retiring from it very wealthy. The priests, as might have been expected, were soon around him, like sharks around a slave-ship, all eager to discover, in his conversation and manners, the contamination of heresy, with which they took it for granted he was infected, from having dwelt so long among those obstinate and perverse heretics, the English; but Anastasio was too well acquainted with human nature, and with the ways of the world, to be thrown off his guard. He gave most munificently to the church; and, in spite of all their attempts to place Isabella in a convent, as a boarder, succeeded in retaining her under the immediate care of her excellent mother.
In making this arrangement, he was much assisted by a priest, whom he had formerly been acquainted with, and whom he now took into his family, as father confessor. In short, by the judicious management of pretty large sums of money, that he was able to spare, in less than a year after his return to Spain, Anastasio de Luna obtained the character of a good Catholic, who had kept fast the integrity of his faith, during a long residence among heretics. As for Madame de Luna, after having delivered her over in trust to the devil, the clergy gave themselves little or no concern about her; though her liberal charity, and the mildness and sweetness of her disposition, made her friends of all who knew her. Many a saint, of the present day, holds his character for sanctity by as slight a tenure, as Anastasio did his as an orthodox Catholic; and many a modest, unpretending female, has been, like Madame de Luna, regarded as an infidel, and a vessel of wrath, for not sounding a trumpet before her, in the exercise of unassuming virtues.
In about three years after his return to his native country, Anastasio died, bequeathing a large sum to the church, not from any violent partiality to the Catholic faith, but in order to secure peace to his wife and daughter. His widow intended to return to England; but her health was failing rapidly, and in a little more than a year after her husband's death, she followed him to the grave, with her last breath enjoining upon her daughter never to part with the faith in which she had been educated, and never to marry a Catholic, unless she was sure of the purity and goodness of his morals. This might seem illiberal in her; but there is no accounting for the prejudices of people, especially upon religious subjects.