With only a blind instinct of some dreadful sacrilege in this act, Father Pedro would have rushed forward, when the girl's voice struck his ear.

He stopped, breathless.

It was not Francisco, but Juanita, the little mestiza.
"But are you sure you are not pretending to love me now, as you pretended to think I was the muchacha you had run away with and lost?
Are you sure it is not pity for the deceit you practiced upon me--upon Don Juan--upon poor Father Pedro ?" It seemed as if Cranch had tried to answer with a kiss, for the girl drew suddenly away from him with a coquettish fling of the black braids, and whipped her little brown hands behind her.
"Well, look here," said Cranch, with the same easy, good-natured, practical directness which the priest remembered, and which would have passed for philosophy in a more thoughtful man, "put it squarely, then.
In the first place, it was Don Juan and the alcalde who first suggested you might be the child." "But you have said you knew it was Francisco all the time," interrupted Juanita.
"I did; but when I found the priest would not assist me at first, and admit that the acolyte was a girl, I preferred to let him think I was deceived in giving a fortune to another, and leave it to his own conscience to permit it or frustrate it.

I was right.

I reckon it was pretty hard on the old man, at his time of life, and wrapped up as he was in the girl; but at the moment he came up to the scratch like a man." "And to save him you have deceived me?
Thank you, Senor," said the girl with a mock curtsey.
"I reckon I preferred to have you for a wife than a daughter," said Cranch, "if that's what you mean.