Maria raised to him her eyes full of tears, looked at him a moment, then sobbed afresh.
Maria came slowly to him, fell on her knees at his feet, and raising her face wet with tears, asked in a voice scarcely audible:
"Then--protect my father and make him break off my marriage." And she told him of her last interview with Ibarra, omitting everything about the secret of her birth.
Father Dámaso could scarcely believe what he heard. She was talking calmly now, without tears.
"So long as he lived," she went on, "I could struggle, I could hope, I had confidence; I wished to live to hear about him; but now--that they have killed him, I have no longer any reason to live and suffer."
"If he had lived, I might have married--for my father's sake; but now that he is dead, I want the convent--or the grave."
"You loved him so?" stammered Father Dámaso. Maria did not reply. The father bent his head on his breast.
"My child," he said at last in a broken voice, "forgive me for having made you unhappy; I did not know I was doing it! I thought of your future. How could I let you marry a man of this country, to see you, later on, an unhappy wife and mother? I set myself with all my strength to get this love out of your mind, I used all means--for you, only for you. If you had been his wife, you would have wept for the unfortunate position of your husband, exposed to all sorts of dangers, and without defence; a mother, you would have wept for your children; had you educated them, you would have prepared them a sad future; they would have become enemies of religion; the gallows or exile would have been their portion; had you left them in ignorance, you would have seen them tyrannized over and degraded. I could not consent to this. That is why I found for you a husband whose children should command, not obey; punish, not suffer--I knew your childhood's friend was good, and I liked him, as I did his father; but I hated them both for your sake, because I love you as one loves a daughter, because I idolize you--I have no other love; I have seen you grow up, there isn't an hour in which I do not think of you, you are my one joy----" And Father Dámaso began to cry like a child.
"Then if you love me, do not make me forever miserable; he is dead, I wish to be a nun."