Before Camarga could rebuke this burst of passion, she sank, as before, to the earth, weeping afresh; for she was in that pitiable state of mental feebleness, in which life seems only to continue in impulses,--a chain of convulsions and exhaustions. "Alas, father," she continued, with sobs, "you have been taught, like the rest, to misconceive and belie the best and most unfortunate of men;--for such is Juan Lerma;--and you have perhaps joined with the rest to compass his destruction. Has he wronged you? no--you have imagined a wrong. Has he wronged Cortes? no--he has wronged no one; but the ear of Cortes was open to his enemies. Hear me, father, and while you condemn me, listen to the refutation of slander. Father, when I opened mine eyes to the light, and in the presence of him who had saved me, I forgot my vows; nay, I thought that heaven had absolved them in the wreck, and ordained that I should be happy in a new existence. Never before had I looked upon the world, and the people of the world,--never before had I looked upon Juan Lerma. When had I seen one smile upon me with affection? Father, for a second such smile, I would have moaned again on the wreck, seeing my companions swept from me one by one. I grew cunning and deceitful, and when they asked me of the ship and people, I told them falsehoods, lest they should bring me the veil and the priest, and carry me from his presence. Alas! and my deceit availed not; he smiled no more; and when Hilario spoke of affection--affection for me,--Juan Lerma withdrew without a sigh, without a struggle." "Saints of heaven!" cried Camarga, starting with horror, gasping for breath, and, in the sense of suffocation, forgetting his assumed character so much as to fling back the cowl that had concealed his features. "Dost thou speak me the truth? On thy life,--on thy hopes of heaven's forgiveness,--on thy love even for this lost, perhaps this dead, youth,--I charge thee speak me the truth. Went there no more than this between you? And Juan Lerma loved you not? and Villafana belied ye both? And you are not--" He paused in agitation, unable to utter another word; and Magdalena, surprised as much at his extraordinary interest in her story, as well as confounded by the absence of the tonsure, and the glittering of an iron gorget about his throat, seemed for a moment unable to answer his questions. But summoning her spirits at last, she said, "Thou art not a priest, but a layman, a stranger, and a man of sin! But be who thou wilt, friend or foe, thou knowest now enough of my history to be entitled to know all. Never did man couple my name with shame, and think of any but him who died under the dagger of Villafana. As for Juan Lerma, not even Cortes, his bitterest enemy, would dare accuse him of a deed of dishonour. Stranger, if thou art interested in the betrayed and murdered Juan, know at least that he died innocent of any wrong to Magdalena."