In the meantime poor Clara remained in happy ignorance of the fate awaiting her; though the hints carelessly thrown out by her brother had for the time alarmed her; but she persuaded herself that he had but spoken in joke, and thought no more on the subject; her only remaining doubts being occasioned by her not having been informed of the reason for her visit to Lisbon. She was occasionally visited by the old marchioness, whose conversation was very far from contributing to enliven her, being chiefly long homilies for the regulation of her religious and moral conduct, and warnings against the sins which the pomps and vanities of the world would lead her to commit. Then she would launch out into praise of the advantages to be derived from a life of seclusion from the temptations of the world, ending with deep regrets that she herself in her youth had not rather assumed the veil, than subjected herself to the unhappiness she had endured; though it may be observed that she had never thought so till she had lost all taste for the pleasures she reprobated, and had contrived for a long course of years to yield very freely to the temptations she spoke of, without very seriously damaging her reputation; the marquis, her husband, having been of a very kind and indulgent disposition, and she having discovered certain peccadillos of his, which enabled her to keep a constant check over him, and prevented him from inquiring too minutely into what she chose to do. The chief cause of her present style of conversation was, that the Padre Alfonzo, who had determined, for reasons of his own, that his fair young penitent should assume the veil, and was now employing every means he thought likely to aid his purpose, had for that reason assiduously paid his court to the marchioness from the moment of his arrival, and easily gained her over to his views, pointing out the advantages which Clara would find, both in a spiritual and moral point of view, in a monastic life, and the misery she would endure if united to a man of so bad a character as he hinted that of the count to be. He also assured the old lady that it would much contribute to gain pardon from heaven for her own trespasses, if she were the means of offering so acceptable a sacrifice to the Church; and the last argument completely gained his point.