"All is lost! Padre Damaso has ordered me to break the engagement, otherwise he will damn me in this life and in the next.

All of them told me the same, even Padre Sibyla.

I must close the doors of my house against him, and I owe him over fifty thousand pesos! I told the padres this, but they refused to take any notice of it.

'Which do you prefer to lose,' they asked me, 'fifty thousand pesos or your life and your soul ?' Ay, St.Anthony, if I had only known, if I had only known! Don't cry, daughter," he went on, turning to the sobbing girl.

"You're not like your mother, who never cried except just before you were born.