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"Inez, you crouch like a guilty being before er step was never taken by a reasonable being Inez, raise your head, and tell ion, alone, unprotected, and in disguise?"
Inez lifted slowly the once beautiful face, now haggard and pale Anguish of spirit had left its impress on her dark brorinkled by early care Mournful was the expression of the large dark eyes raised to his face: "Dr Bryant, I am alone in the wide, orld--there are none to protect--none to care for me now! My father sleeps by Mañuel's side, in the churchyard, and I am the last of my house The name of De Garcia, once so proud and honored, will become a byword for desolation and misery! I have said cursed was the hour of my birth! and I now say blessed is the hour of my last sleep! You see me here from necessity, not choice, for all places would be alike to me now; but I have been driven from my lonely hearth--I dared not stay, I flew to this dreary waste for peace--for protection! There is no rest, no peace for uard and keep me from harm! Alone, friendless, in this wide, bitter world!"
"Your language is strangely aer threatens, and believe that all I can do to avert evil will gladly be done?"
"Dr Bryant, the Padre is my most inveterate enemy! Is not this sufficient to account for irl! how have you incurred thattale, and needless to repeat: enough, that he plotted , silent walls of a far-off convent was ht enrich his precious church You look wonderingly upon e, this, I think you say, for a lamb of his flock How dare you speak so irreverently of the holy man, consecrated priest of Rome as he is? Dr Bryant, I am no Catholic, nor have I been since you have known me It was ht the confessional, and all the while cursed him in my heart I watched him, and saved your people from destruction Would you kno? I heard whispered pro between an eodly Padre At imminent risk I listened to their plot You were to be kept in ignorance of the powerful force hurrying on to destroy you Santa Anna was to burst suddenly upon the town, and, ere you could receive reinforcements, capture the Alamo at a blow Once in his possession, more than one of your people were to be handed over to the tender er, and happily you heeded the signs of the time; else you, too, would now molder beneath the walls of the Alaht to consummate my destruction I was made a prisoner in rave! I fled in the h cut short the knotted thread ofsavedthe channel of the river When I parted froave me this book, and asked s She clasped my hand, and told me to rement of that other, final world Oh! if there be a heaven and a purgatory! a God and a judge! if I sink to perdition, one alone is to blaive my sins; that the more completely I obeyed him on earth, the more blessed I should be in heaven Yet I have heard him lie, and seen him set aside the rules of humanity and the laws of God! Mary's Bible tells me 'to keep holy the Sabbath day' Yet, from my childhood, I have seen our Priests at hts on the evening of the same day! And I have seen them take from the , as the burial-fee of her husband, the last cow she possessed I saw these things, and I said, there is no God, or he would not suffer such as these to minister as his chosen servants upon the earth I said in atory is but a lie ends and frequent atory, or they would fear the retribution in store for theht of religion I said there is none on the earth--it is ain, and all that constitutes the difference is, that soifted with el that she is--I saw her with the sick and the dying: she railed not at our priest, as he at her She carried her Bible to the bed of death, and told them to look to God for the to Jesus as their only Mediator Peace followed her steps, and ood she would have done, but ood Papists to shun her as they would an incarnate dehtened many into subatory I said to ion, this Mary walketh in the right path, for like an angel of ht she ever see of all who knew her Oh! I will come to you, Mary, and learn of you, and die near, that you may be with me in the hour of rest"