In vain the costly wedding gifts were heaped upon the table. Neither the diamonds in their blue velvet caskets, nor the embroidered pi?a, nor the pieces of silk had any attractions for Maria Clara. The maiden looked at the paper which gave the account of Ibarra’s death, drowned in the lake, but she neither saw nor read it.  
Of a sudden, she felt two hands over her eyes. They held her fast while a joyous voice, Father Dámaso’s, said to her:
 
“Who am I? Who am I?”
 
Maria Clara jumped from her seat and looked at him with terror in her eyes.
 
“You little goose, were you frightened, eh? You were not expecting me? Well, I have come from the provinces to attend your wedding.”
 
And coming up to her again with a smile of satisfaction, he stretched out his hand to her. Maria Clara approached timidly and, raising it to her lips, kissed it.
 
“What is the matter with you, Maria?” asked the Franciscan, losing his gay smile, and becoming very uneasy. “Your hand is cold, you are pale.... Are you ill, my little girl?”
 
And Father Dámaso drew her up to him with a fondness of which no one would have thought him capable. He grasped both the maiden’s hands and gave her a questioning look.
 
“Haven’t you any confidence in your godfather?” he asked in a reproachful tone. “Come, sit down here and tell me your little troubles, just as you used to do when you were a child, when you wanted wax-candles to make wax figures. You surely know that I have always loved you.... I have never scolded you....”
 
Father Dámaso’s voice ceased to be brusque; its modulations [268]were even caressing. Maria Clara began to weep.
 
“Are you weeping, my child? Why are you weeping? Have you quarrelled with Linares?”
 
Maria Clara covered her eyes with her hands.
 
“No! It is not he now!” cried the maiden.
 
Father Dámaso looked at her full of surprise.
 
“Do you not want to entrust your secrets to me? Have I not always managed to satisfy your smallest caprices?”
 
The young woman raised her eyes full of tears toward him. She looked at him for some time, and then began to weep bitterly.
 
“Do not cry so, my child, for your tears pain me! Tell me your troubles. You will see how your godfather loves you.”
 
Maria Clara approached him slowly and fell on her knees at his feet. Then raising her face, bathed in tears, she said to him in a low voice, scarcely audible:
 
“Do you still love me?”
 
“Child!”
 
“Then ... protect my father, and break off the marriage!”
 
Then she related her last interview with Ibarra, omitting the reference to her birth.
 
Father Dámaso could scarcely believe what he heard.
 
“While he lived,” continued the maiden, “I intended to fight, to wait, to trust. I wanted to live to hear him spoken of ... but now that they have killed him, now there is no reason for my living and suffering.”
 
She said this slowly, in a low voice, calmly and without a tear.
 
“But, you goose; isn’t Linares a thousand times better than....?”
 
“When he was living, I could have married ... I was thinking of fleeing afterward ... my father wanted nothing more than the relative. Now that he is dead, no other man will call me his wife.... While he lived, I could have debased myself and still had the consolation of knowing that he existed and per............