He went, however, without further parley, stopping only to warn the Senora against the sin “of standing with the enemies of God and the Holy Church,” and to order Isabel to recite for her mother’s pardon and comfort a certain number of aves and paternosters. Antonia went with him to the door, and ere he left he blessed her, and said: “The Senorita will examine her soul and see her sin. Then the ever merciful Church will hear her confession, and give her the satisfying penance.” Antonia bowed in response. When people are in great domestic sorrow, self-examination is a superfluous advice. She listened a moment to his departing footsteps, shivering as she stood in the darkness, for a norther had sprung up, and the cold was severe. She only glanced into the pleasant parlor where the table was laid for dinner, and a great fire of cedar logs was throwing red, dancing lights over the white linen and the shining silver and glass. The chairs were placed around the table; her father’s at the head. It had a forsaken air that was unendurable. The dinner hour was now long past. It would be folly to attempt the meal. How could she and Isabel sit down alone and eat, and her father in prison, and her mother frantic with a loss which she was warned it was sinful to mourn over. Antonia had a soul made for extremities and not afraid to face them, but invisible hands controlled her. What could a woman do, whom society had forbidden to do anything, but endure the pangs of patience? The Senora could offer no suggestions. She was not indeed in a mood to think of her resources. A spiritual dread was upon her. And with this mingled an intense sense of personal wrong from her husband. “Had she not begged him to be passive? And he had put an old rifle before her and her daughters! It was all that Senor Houston’s doing. She had an assurance of that.” She invoked a thousand maledictions on him. She recalled, with passionate reproaches, Jack’s infidelity to her and his God and his country. Her anger passed from one subject to another constantly, finding in all, even in the lukewarmness of Antonia and Isabel, and in their affection for lovers, who were also rebels, an accumulating reason for a stupendous reproach against herself, her husband, her children, and her unhappy fate. Her whole nature was in revolt--in that complete mental and moral anarchy from which springs tragedy and murder. Isabel wept so violently that she angered still further the tearless suffering of her mother. “God and the saints!” she cried. “What are you weeping for? Will tears do any good? Do I weep? God has forbidden me to weep for the wicked. Yet how I suffer! Mary, mother of sorrows, pity me!”