“I have never spoken a word of love to her!” interrupted Hurlstone quickly.  “I have even tried to avoid her since”—­

“Since you found that you loved her!  Ah, foolish boy! and you think that because the lips speak not, the passions of the heart are stilled!  Do you think your silence in her presence is not a protestation that she, even she, child as she is, can read, with the cunning of her sex?”

“Well—­if I am in love with her, what then?” said Hurlstone doggedly.  “It is no crime to love a pure and simple girl.  Am I not free?  You yourself, in yonder church, told me”—­

“Silence, Diego,” said the priest sternly.  “Silence, before you utter the thought that shall disgrace you to speak and me to hear!”

“Forgive me, Father Esteban,” said the young man hurriedly, grasping both hands of the priest.  “Forgive me—­I am mad—­distracted—­but I swear to you I only meant”—­

“Hush!” interrupted the priest more gently.  “So; that will do.”  He stopped, drew out his snuff-box, rapped the lid, and took a pinch of snuff slowly.  “We will not recur to that point.  Then you have told her the story of your life?”

“No; but I will, She shall know all—­everything—­before I utter a word of love to her.”

“Ah! bueno! muy bueno!” said the Padre, wiping his nose ostentatiously.  “Ah! let me see!  Then, when we have shown her that we cannot possibly marry her, we will begin to make love to her!  Eh, eh! that is the American fashion.  Ah, pardon!” he continued, in response to a gesture of protestation from Hurlstone; “I am wrong.  It is when we have told her that we cannot marry her as a Protestant, that we will make love as a Catholic.  Is that it?”

“Hear me,” said Hurlstone passionately.  “You have saved me from madness and, perhaps, death.  Your care—­your kindness—­your teachings have given me life again.  Don’t blame me, Father Esteban, if, in casting off my old self, you have given me hopes of a new and fresher life—­of”—­

“A newer and fresher love, you would say,” said the Padre, with a sad smile.  “Be it so.  You will at least do justice to the old priest, when you remember that he never pressed you to take vows that would have prevented this forever.”

“I know it,” said Hurlstone, taking the old man’s hand.  “And you will remember, too, that I was happy and contented before this came upon me.  Tell me what I shall do.  Be my guide—­my friend, Father Esteban.  Put me where I was a few months ago—­before I learned to love her.”

“Do you mean it, Diego?” said the old man, grasping his hand tightly, and fixing his eyes upon him.

“I do.”