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They gazed at one another without speaking, Dorothea at Don Fernando, Don

Fernando at Cardenio, Cardenio at Luscinda, and Luscinda at Cardenio The

first to break silence was Luscinda, who thus addressed Don Fernando:

"Leave me, Senor Don Fernando, for the sake of what you owe to yourself;

if no other reason will induce you, leaveto the wall of

which I am the ivy, to the support from which neither your importunities,

nor your threats, nor your proifts have been able to

detach ht, has

brought me face to face with ht experience that death alone will be able to efface him from

my memory May this plain declaration, then, lead you, as you can do

nothing else, to turn your love into rage, your affection into

resentment, and so to take my life; for if I yield it up in the presence

of my beloved husband I count it well bestowed; it may be by my death he

will be convinced that I kept my faith to him to the last moment of

life"

Meanwhile Dorothea had come to herself, and had heard Luscinda's words,

bythat Don Fernando

did not yet release her or reply to her, su up her resolution as

well as she could she rose and knelt at his feet, and with a flood of

bright and touching tears addressed him thus:

"If, my lord, the beams of that sun that thou holdest eclipsed in thine

arht thou wouldst have seen by

this ti as thou wilt have

it so, the unhappy and unfortunate Dorothea I aoodness or for thy pleasure wouldst raise high enough

to call herself thine; I am she who in the seclusion of innocence led a

contented life until at the voice of thy importunity, and thy true and

tender passion, as it seeates of her ift received by thee but

thanklessly, as is clearly shown by my forced retreat to the place where