Doña Clara was a woman of a cold and grave temper, with all the solemnity of a Spaniard, and all the austerity of a bigot. Don Fernan presented that union of fiery passion and saturnic manners not unusual among Spaniards. His dull and selfish pride was wounded by the recollection of his family having been in trade; and, looking on the unrivalled beauty of his sister as a possible means of his obtaining an alliance with a family of rank, he viewed her with that kind of selfish partiality as little honourable to him who feels it, as to her who was its object.
And it was amid such beings that the vivid and susceptible Immalee, the daughter of nature, “the gay creature of the elements,” was doomed to wither away the richly-coloured and exquisitely-scented flower of an existence so ungenially transplanted. Her singular destiny seemed to have removed her from a physical wilderness, to place her in a moral one. And, perhaps, her last state was worse than her first.
It is certain that the gloomiest prospect presents nothing so chilling as the aspect of human faces, in which we try in vain to trace one corresponding expression; and the sterility of nature itself is luxury compared to the sterility of human hearts, which communicate all the desolation they feel.
They had been some time on their way, when Doña Clara, who never spoke till after a long preface of silence, perhaps to give what she said a weight it might otherwise have wanted, said, with oracular deliberation, “Daughter, I hear you fainted in the public walks last night—did you meet with anything that surprised or terrified you?”
“No, Madam.”
“What, then, could be the cause of the emotion you betrayed at the sight, as I am told—I know nothing—of a personage of extraordinary demeanour?”
“Oh, I cannot, dare not tell!” said Isidora, dropping her veil over her burning cheek. Then the irrepressible ingenuousness of her former nature, rushing over her heart and frame like a flood, she sunk from the cushion on which she sat at Doña Clara’s feet, exclaiming, “Oh, mother, I will tell you all!”
“No!” said Doña Clara, repelling her with a cold feeling of offended pride; “no!—there is no occasion. I seek no confidence withheld and bestowed in the same breath; nor do I like these violent emotions—they are unmaidenly. Your duties as a child are easily understood—they are merely perfect obedience, profound submission, and unbroken silence, except when you are addressed by me, your brother, or Father Jose. Surely no duties were ever more easily performed—rise, then, and cease to weep. If your conscience disturbs you, accuse yourself to Father Jose, who will, no doubt, inflict a penance proportioned to the enormity of your offence. I trust only he will not err on the side of indulgence.” And so saying, Doña Clara, who had never uttered so long a speech before, reclined back on her cushion, and began to tell her beads with much devotion, till the arrival of the carriage at its destination awoke her from a profound and peaceful sleep.
It was near noon, and dinner in a cool low apartment near the garden awaited only the approach of Father Jose, the confessor. He arrived at length. He was a man of an imposing figure, mounted on a stately mule. His features, at first view, bore strong traces of thought; but, on closer examination, those traces seemed rather the result of physical conformation, than of any intellectual exercise. The channel was open, but the stream had not been directed there. However, though defective in education, and somewhat narrow in mind, Father Jose was a good man, and meant well. He loved power, and he was devoted to the interests of the Catholic church; but he had frequently doubts (which he kept to himself), of the absolute necessity of celibacy, and he felt (strange effect!) a chill all over him when he heard of the fires of an auto-da-fé. Dinner was concluded; the fruit and wine, the latter untasted by the females, were on the table—the choicest of them placed before Father Jose—when Isidora, after a profound reverence to her mother and the priest, retired, as usual, to her apartment. Doña Clara turned to the confessor with a look that demanded to be answered.
“It is her hour for siesta,” said the priest, helping himself to a bunch of grapes.
“No, Father, no!” said Doña Clara sadly; “her maid informs me she does not retire to sleep. She was, alas! too well accustomed to that burning climate where she was lost in her infancy, to feel the heat as a Christian should. No, she retires neither to pray or sleep, after the devout custom of Spanish women, but, I fear, to—”
“To do what?” said the priest, with horror in his voice.
“To think, I fear,” said Doña Clara; “for often I observe, on her return, the traces of tears on her face. I tremble, Father, lest those tears be shed for that heathen land, that region of Satan, where her youth was passed.”
“I’ll give her a penance,” said Father Jose, “that will save her the trouble of shedding tears on the score of memory at least—these grapes are delicious.”
“But, Father,” pursued Doña Clara, with all the weak but restless anxiety of a superstitious mind, “though you have made me easy on that subject, I still am wretched. Oh, Father, how she will talk sometimes!—like a creature self-taught, that needed neither director or confessor but her own heart.”
“How!” exclaimed Father Jose, “need neither confessor or director!—she must be beside herself.”
“Oh, Father,” continued Doña Clara, “she will say things in her mild and unanswerable manner, that, armed with all my authority, I—”
“How—how is that?” said the priest, in a
