For with the girls, there was the wondrous charm of love and nature; but with the priest, only a splendid ideal of a Church universal that was to swallow up all the claims of love and all the ties of nature.
It was nearly nine o'clock when Antonia and Isabel returned to the parlor fire.

Their hearts were full of sorrow for their mother, and of fears for their own future.

For this confidence had shown them how firmly the refuge of the convent had been planted in the anxious ideas of the Senora.

Fortunately, the cold had driven the servants either to the kitchen fire or to their beds, and they could talk over the subject without fear of interference.
"Are you sleepy, queridita ?"--( little dear).
"I think I shall never go to sleep again, Antonia.

If I shut my eyes I shall find myself in the convent; and I do not want to go there even in a dream.