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“Let the dead rest,” cried Doña Feliz, sharply. “That is a forbidden subject in Doña Isabel’s house. You are her guest.”

Vicente accepted the reproof with a shrug of his shoulders, and Doña Feliz added, as if at once to turn his thoughts and afford the sympathy he craved, “Talk to me then, if you will, of Herlinda. Do you know where she is now?”

“Yes, in Lagos, in that dreariest of prisons the convent of Our Lady of Tribulation. Think you Maria Santisima can desire such scourgings, such long fastings, such interminable vigils as they say are practised there? God grant the scoffers are right, and that the reputed self-immolations are but imaginings,—tales of the priests to attract richer offerings to the Church shrine. When I saw it, it was groaning beneath vessels of gold and silver and wreaths of jewels. Oh, Feliz! Feliz! higher and heavier than the treasures they pile on their altars are the woes these monks and nuns accumulate upon our devoted country!”

Doña Feliz glanced around warily, but an expression of genuine acquiescence gleamed from her eyes.