“SEÑOR: The rose you asked of yesterday I gave Don Ramon; but the message that went with it was given him for you. “MARIA JOESPHA DOLORES, CONDESA DE LUNA.” As she finished writing, the General was announced. His face was bloodless, but his wounds had been carefully dressed, so that the bandages could not be seen. He knelt over her hand, though the kneeling set them bleeding once again. But Dolores, timid only in her love, still saw but remorse and duty in his eyes. With him he brought his own priest, a priest from the Liberal army. “Pobra,” he said, “we must be married early--early and privately.” She sought his eyes timidly and tried to say it; to say what words her note said in her hand. But she could not. She could only say, “I know--I have heard,” and she clenched the letter closer in her hand. She could not give it to him. Del Torre’s face could not turn whiter. But he said: “Forgive me--only your forgiveness I can ask. At noon, then?” “At noon.” She saw him leave the house; then, then she turned and cried to Jacinta: “Run, run, and give him this letter--at the Cathedral.” And again, upon her wedding-morning, Dolores went to pray. She was interrupted by a visit from the Archbishop. Some presentiment made her rise in apprehension; and as she stood erect, she saw, through the priest, the man. And she saw that he, too, had her secret; first the lover, then the priest, had found it out. “This marriage must not be,” said he. “Holy Father, I have confessed yesterday.” “This marriage must not be. You loved Don Ramon.” Dolores’s lips curled. “I confessed, yesterday. I see you have been told.” “Yesterday ’twas a duty--to-day it is a sin. Thou lovest Ramon.” Then Dolores rose to her full height and her blue eyes flamed like ice. “Sebastian, the Liberador, him I love, in this life and the next; God knows it, and Ramon knows it, and now may you, and soon, please God, shall he!” All forewarned that he was, the priest started at her vehemence. Fool that he had been! “He has murdered his nephew--and thou art the cause.” The Countess was silent. All Catholic that she was, she had resolved to appeal from his judgment to God’s. “Thou wilt not obey?” said the priest. Her lips half formed the word no. “Then on thee and on him, on thy house I pronounce the curse of God. Thy family shall have cause to remember this day, this Holy Thursday, until it and both thy names shall have vanished from the earth.” Scarcely had the Archbishop left the house when del Torre came. She saw that he had not been to church. But she was married to him without another word. “If he has not my note,” she thought, “he shall have it soon.” But before that night Jacinta, with the note in her hand, was buried with ten thousand others behind the closed cathedral doors. XII.