She nodded. "So, lighten your heart, my child. If you are _in_ the right, I will be the first to _do_ you right; but you are young, and know but little of the world, and you might repent by-and-by at having ruined your happiness for life for the sake of a childish fancy." She cast a shy, rapid glance towards the young man, who sat rowing steadily behind them in the boat, with his woollen cap plucked deeply over his brows, gazing sideways at the sea, and seemingly lost in his own reflections. The padre observed her glance, and bent his head nearer to her. "You did not know my father," she whispered, and her eyes gleamed darkly. "Your father! he died, if I remember rightly, when you were hardly ten years old. What can your father, whose soul may be in Paradise, have to do with your caprice?" "You did not know him, padre: you did not know that he was the cause of all my mother's illness." "How so?" "Because he ill-treated her, and beat her, and trampled her under his feet! I remember the night well when he used to come home in a rage! She never said an angry word to him--did all that he wished; but he beat her till I thought my heart would have broken, and used to draw the coverlid over my head, and pretend to be asleep, but cried all the night through. And when he saw her lying on the floor, he changed suddenly, and raised her up, and kissed her, till she cried that he was suffocating her. My mother forbad me ever to say a word about it. But it had such an effect upon her, that she has never been well all these long years since he has been dead; and if she should die soon, which the Madonna forbid, I know well who killed her." The little priest shook his head, and seemed undecided as to what extent he should justify his penitent. At last he said, "Forgive him, as your mother has forgiven him. Do not fasten your thoughts on that sad picture, Lauretta. Better times will come for you, and you will forget all this." "Never shall I forget it," she cried, shuddering; "and I tell you, padre, that I will remain a maiden, and be subject to no one who may ill-treat me one moment and caress me the next. If any one tries to strike me or to kiss me now, I know how to defend myself; but my mother could not defend herself, or ward off the blows or the kisses, because she loved him; and I will love no one so much as to give him the power of making me ill and miserable." "Now, are you not a child, talking as a child, and knowing nothing of what happens in the world? Are all men like your father, giving way to every fancy and ill-humour, and beating their wives? Have you not seen kind-hearted men enough who live in peace and unity with their wives?"