yearns to join us; we are drawn together as the stars are turned

about in space, or as the tides ebb and flow, by things older and
greater than we ourselves.'

'Alas!' she said, 'what can I say to you? My fathers, eight
hundred years ago, ruled all this province: they were wise, great,

cunning, and cruel; they were a picked race of the Spanish; their
flags led in war; the king called them his cousin; the people, when

the rope was slung for them or when they returned and found their
hovels smoking, blasphemed their name. Presently a change began.

Man has risen; if he has sprung from the brutes, he can descend
again to the same level. The breath of weariness blew on their

humanity and the cords relaxed; they began to go down; their minds
fell on sleep, their passions awoke in gusts, heady and senseless

like the wind in the gutters of the mountains; beauty was still
handed down, but no longer the guiding wit nor the human heart; the

seed passed on, it was wrapped in flesh, the flesh covered the
bones, but they were the bones and the flesh of brutes, and their

mind was as the mind of flies. I speak to you as I dare; but you
have seen for yourself how the wheel has gone backward with my

doomed race. I stand, as it were, upon a little rising ground in
this desperatedescent, and see both before and behind, both what

we have lost and to what we are condemned to go farther downward.
And shall I - I that dwell apart in the house of the dead, my body,

loathing its ways - shall I repeat the spell? Shall I bind another
spirit, reluctant as my own, into this bewitched and tempest-broken

tenement that I now suffer in? Shall I hand down this cursed
vessel of humanity, charge it with fresh life as with fresh poison,

and dash it, like a fire, in the faces of posterity? But my vow
has been given; the race shall cease from off the earth. At this

hour my brother is making ready; his foot will soon be on the
stair; and you will go with him and pass out of my sight for ever.

Think of me sometimes as one to whom the lesson of life was very
harshly told, but who heard it with courage; as one who loved you

indeed, but who hated herself so deeply that her love was hateful
to her; as one who sent you away and yet would have longed to keep

you for ever; who had no dearer hope than to forget you, and no
greater fear than to be forgotten.'

She had drawn towards the door as she spoke, her rich voice
sounding softer and farther away; and with the last word she was

gone, and I lay alone in the moonlitchamber. What I might have
done had not I lain bound by my extremeweakness, I know not; but

as it was there fell upon me a great and blank despair. It was not
long before there shone in at the door the ruddy glimmer of a

lantern, and Felipe coming, charged me without a word upon his
shoulders, and carried me down to the great gate, where the cart

was waiting. In the moonlight the hills stood out sharply, as if
they were of cardboard; on the glimmering surface of the plateau,

and from among the low trees which swung together and sparkled in
the wind, the great black cube of the residencia stood out bulkily,

its mass only broken by three dimly lighted windows in the northern
front above the gate. They were Olalla's windows, and as the cart

jolted onwards I kept my eyes fixed upon them till, where the road
dipped into a valley, they were lost to my view forever. Felipe

walked in silence beside the shafts, but from time to time he would
cheek the mule and seem to look back upon me; and at length drew

quite near and laid his hand upon my head. There was such kindness
in the touch, and such a simplicity, as of the brutes, that tears

broke from me like the bursting of an artery.
'Felipe,' I said, 'take me where they will ask no questions.'

He said never a word, but he turned his mule about, end for end,
retraced some part of the way we had gone, and, striking into

another path, led me to the mountain village, which was, as we say
in Scotland, the kirkton of that thinly peopled district. Some

broken memories dwell in my mind of the day breaking over the
plain, of the cart stopping, of arms that helped me down, of a bare

room into which I was carried, and of a swoon that fell upon me
like sleep.

The next day and the days following the old priest was often at my
side with his snuff-box and prayer book, and after a while, when I

began to pick up strength, he told me that I was now on a fair way
to recovery, and must as soon as possible hurry my departure;

whereupon, without naming any reason, he took snuff and looked at
me sideways. I did not affectignorance; I knew he must have seen

Olalla. 'Sir,' said I, 'you know that I do not ask in wantonness.
What of that family?'

He said they were very unfortunate; that it seemed a declining
race, and that they were very poor and had been much neglected.

'But she has not,' I said. 'Thanks, doubtless, to yourself, she is
instructed and wise beyond the use of women.'

'Yes,' he said; 'the Senorita is well-informed. But the family has
been neglected.'

'The mother?' I queried.
'Yes, the mother too,' said the Padre, taking snuff. 'But Felipe

is a well-intentioned lad.'
'The mother is odd?' I asked.

'Very odd,' replied the priest.
'I think, sir, we beat about the bush,' said I. 'You must know

more of my affairs than you allow. You must know my curiosity to
be justified on many grounds. Will you not be frank with me?'

'My son,' said the old gentleman, 'I will be very frank with you on
matters within my competence; on those of which I know nothing it

does not require much discretion to be silent. I will not fence
with you, I take your meaning perfectly; and what can I say, but

that we are all in God's hands, and that His ways are not as our
ways? I have even advised with my superiors in the church, but

they, too, were dumb. It is a great mystery.'
'Is she mad?' I asked.

'I will answer you according to my belief. She is not,' returned
the Padre, 'or she was not. When she was young - God help me, I

fear I neglected that wild lamb - she was surely sane; and yet,
although it did not run to such heights, the same strain was

already notable; it had been so before her in her father, ay, and
before him, and this inclined me, perhaps, to think too lightly of

it. But these things go on growing, not only in the individual but
in the race.'

'When she was young,' I began, and my voice failed me for a moment,
and it was only with a great effort that I was able to add, 'was

she like Olalla?'
'Now God forbid!' exclaimed the Padre. 'God forbid that any man

should think so slightingly of my favourite penitent. No, no; the
Senorita (but for her beauty, which I wish most honestly she had

less of) has not a hair's resemblance to what her mother was at the
same age. I could not bear to have you think so; though, Heaven

knows, it were, perhaps, better that you should.'
At this, I raised myself in bed, and opened my heart to the old

man; telling him of our love and of her decision, owning my own
horrors, my own passing fancies, but telling him that these were at

an end; and with something more than a purelyformal submission,
appealing to his judgment.

He heard me very patiently and without surprise; and when I had
done, he sat for some time silent. Then he began: 'The church,'

and instantly broke off again to apologise. 'I had forgotten, my
child, that you were not a Christian,' said he. 'And indeed, upon

a point so highly unusual, even the church can scarce be said to
have decided. But would you have my opinion? The Senorita is, in

a matter of this kind, the best judge; I would accept her
judgment.'

On the back of that he went away, nor was he thenceforward so