and thought not of what they meant. She imagined that her mother might have some communication to make about some intricate point of conscience which Fra Jose had not discussed to her satisfaction, from which she would make an instant transition to the levity visible in the mode in which one attendant damsel arranged her hair, and the suspected sound of a ghitarra under the window of another, and then fly off at a tangent to inquire how the capons were fed, and why the eggs and Muscadine had not been duly prepared for Fra Jose’s supper. Then would she fret about the family clock not chiming synchronically with the bells of the neighbouring church where she performed her devotions. And finally, she fretted about every thing, from the fattening of the “pullen,” and the preparation for the olio, up to the increasing feuds between the Molinists and Jansenists, which had already visited Spain, and the deadly dispute between the Dominican and Franciscan orders, relative to the habit in which it was most effective to salvation for the dying body of the sinner to be wrapped. So between her kitchen and her oratory,--her prayers to the saints, and her scoldings to her servants,--her devotion and her anger,--Donna Clara continued to keep herself and domestics in a perpetual state of interesting occupation and gentle excitement. “Something of this Isidora expected on the summons, and she was, therefore, surprised to see Donna Clara seated at her writing desk,--a large and fairly written manuscript of a letter extended before her,--and to hear words thereafter uttered thus: “Daughter, I have sent for you, that you might with me partake of the pleasure these lines should afford both; and that you may do so, I desire you to sit and hear while they are read to you.” “Donna Clara, as she uttered these words, was seated in a monstrous high-backed chair, of which she actually seemed a part, so wooden was her figure, so moveless her features, so lack-lustre her eyes. “Isidora curtsied low, and sat on one of the cushions with which the room was heaped,--while a spectacled duenna, enthroned on another cushion at the right hand of Donna Clara, read, with sundry pauses and some difficulty, the following letter, which Donna Clara had just received from her husband, who had landed, not _at Ossuna_(23), but at a real sea-port town in Spain, and was now on his way to join his family. “DONNA CLARA, “It is about a year since I received your letter advising me of the recovery of our daughter, whom we believed lost with her nurse on her voyage to India when an infant, to which I would sooner have replied, were I not otherwise hindered by concerns of business. “I would have you understand, that I rejoice not so much that I have recovered a daughter, as that heaven hath regained a soul and a subject, as it were, _e faucibus Draconis--e profundis Barathri_--the which terms Fra Jose will make plain to your weaker comprehension.