"He put you! It was the Viceroy put you in prison, and Don Roderigo was very angry about it; Don Fausto said so." "The Viceroy does nothing of himself, he always consults some one, none more than my father. My father warned me of this conspiracy, and I told him that if the Spaniards here pronounced against Liniers, as Elio did in Monte Video, all Argentines would support the Viceroy against them. He wanted me to promise him that I would take no part either one way or other. I refused, and a few days after I was in prison. Do not you think that one word from my father would have set me free? That word he never spoke. None knew better than he that in the affair of the Princess Carlota nothing could be proved against me, and I fear that he himself suggested my imprisonment." "Even if it be so it was for your sake he did it. If you had been with the Viceroy, and the Spaniards had been successful, no one knows what perils you would have run, in prison you were safe from all risk." "Am I boy, that my father must lock me up to keep me out of mischief? I gave up my scheme to please him, and see now how he trusts me." "Oh! do not speak so, do not speak so, quarrels between Argentines and Spaniards are bad enough, but between father and son they are far worse. Your father has done this out of his care for you; perhaps he is now in danger. You must forgive him and help him." "What can I do if he joins himself with the enemies of my country? Am I to be a traitor to my country for his sake?" "Nevertheless he is your father. Where is he? Perhaps in prison." "I wished to avoid this, he stopped me, and said my scheme was folly. They have commenced it, and now we shall have civil war here in America, with my father on one side, I on the other. I see nothing but misery in the future." "Have you no faith in God? Mr Gordon told me that you used to study the Bible, yet you seem to despair; he who has faith in God can never despair." "For months I have not opened the Bible. I begin to believe that there is no God." "But you did believe there was a God once. You read the Bible and learned lessons of faith from it, have you forgotten them already? When the English came you did your duty, though you said yourself that there was no hope of beating them. Have you less courage now than then? Can you not do your duty and leave the result to God?" Then Marcelino looked up at Magdalen in surprise, he had never heard her speak so before; her voice was low, and there was a sweet tremulousness in her tones which showed that there was a deep earnestness in what she said. Again he took her hand in his, leaning upon the arm of her chair. "Do you ever read the Bible?" he asked. "Every day; my mother taught me when I was quite a little girl in England, and papa promised her that I should always read it. When I came here to live with papa he told me what he had promised my mother for me, and he gave me her Bible which he had kept for me. Every day I read it now."