To hinder his pleading against her self-conviction, she re-opened her letter to prove the cruelty of the injustice.  Mr. Ponsonby professed to have been unwilling to enter so speedily on the new tie; but to have been compelled, by the species of persecution which was exercised on Rosita, in order to make her return to her nunnery.  He dwelt on her timid affection and simplicity, and her exceeding mortification at the slur which Mary had been induced to cast upon her; though, he said, her innocent mind could not comprehend the full extent of the injury; since the step his daughter had taken would, when known, seriously affect the lady’s reception into society, in a manner only to be repaired by Mary’s immediately joining them at Lima.  He peremptorily indicated the ship and the escort—­a merchant’s wife, well known to her and charged her, on her duty, as the only proof of obedience or affection which could remedy the past, to allow no influence nor consideration whatever to detain her.  ’You see?’ said Mary.

‘I see!’ was the answer.  ‘Mary, you are right, you must go.’

The words restored her confiding look, and her face lost almost all the restless wretchedness which had so transformed it.  ‘Thank you,’ she said, with a long breath; ‘I knew you would see it so.’

’It will be a very pretty new style of wedding tour.  Andes for Alps!  No, Mary, you need not suspect me of trifling now!  I really mean it, and, seriously, our going in that way would set this Rosita straight with society much more handsomely and effectually.  Don’t doubt my father—­I will fetch him.’

’Stop, Louis!  You forget!  Did I not tell you that he expressly warns me against you?  He must have heard of what happened before:  he says I had prudence once to withstand, and he trusts to my spirit and discretion to—­’ Mary stopped short of the phrase before her eyes—­to resist the interested solicitations of necessitous nobility, and the allurements of a beggarly coronet.  ‘No,’ she concluded; ’he says that you are the last person whom he could think of allowing me to accept.’  She hid her face in her hands, and her voice died away.

‘Happily that is done,’ said Louis, not yet disconcerted; ’but if you go, as I own you must, it shall be with a letter of mine, explaining all.  You will plead for me—­I think you will, and when he is satisfied that we are no rebels, then the first ship that sails for Peru—­Say that will do, Mary.’

‘No, Louis, I know my father.’  She roused herself and sat upright, speaking resolutely, but not daring to look at him—­’I made up my mind last night.  It was weak and selfish in me to enter into this engagement, and it must be broken off.  You must be left free—­not bound for years and years.’

’Oh, Mary!  Mary! this is too much.  I deserved distrust by my wretched folly and fickleness last year, but I did not know what you were to me then—­my most precious one!  Can you not trust me!  Do you not know how I would wait?’