“But what is it you would say, my mother?” Sumac asked, with momentarily increasing agitation. “It _is_ too late; they love each other. Who could be so cruel as to sunder them? What have you heard? What do you know?” “I _know_ nothing, my child;”—which was true: at least, Sister Maria only knew that the Mother Abbess was a kinswoman of the Viceroy, Don Francisco de Toledo; that three proud and needy young cavaliers—the nephews of both—were waiting in Cuzco for whatever fortune and their powerful kinsfolk might send them; and that the youngest and proudest of the three had cast his fiery dark eyes on the sweet face of Coyllur, and sworn to have her for his bride. And woe betide the Indian slave who should dare to cross the path of his master, the white man! However, there were still a hundred possibilities in the future. Some one might change—something might happen; at all events, the trembling form, the eager parted lips, the wistful anxious eyes of her best-loved pupil were more at that moment to poor Sister Maria than any distant dangers that might menace Coyllur and Viracocha. To turn her thoughts from the subject that alarmed her, she asked,— “But, my Lucia, why should it hurt _you_ that they love each other?” “I don’t know,” faltered Sumac, her head drooping more and more, until at last her face was quite overshadowed by her long and beautiful hair; “I can’t tell. Only, mother,” she added, looking quickly up into the nun’s kind sorrowful eyes, “my heart pains me—_here_. It is hungry—it is empty—it is tired. When Viracocha speaks low and soft to Coyllur, it says within me—‘_You_ will never hear such words any more, Sumac—never any more!’ O mother, mother! there be many voices sweet to others; one voice only was sweet to Sumac,—but it will never speak again! Dark and evil it seems to me that he is dead, and that I am left alive.” And Sumac laid herself, like a tired child, in her friend’s pitying arms, and wept. It was not often that she spoke such words or wept such tears. If she had, she might have lived longer. Sister Maria mingled her tears of sympathy with the hot and passionate drops of Sumac’s bitter sorrow. At last she said,— “Lucia, my child, would you desire to change your lot for that of Coyllur now?” It was rather a strange question for a nun to ask. But Sister Maria had been a woman before she became a nun; and in spite of conventual life and discipline, the woman’s heart throbbed in her bosom still. “Oh no, no! Mother, don’t you remember that _I_ was to have been the sole Inca’s bride?” “Is it, then, because you esteem it so great an honour to be, as you call it, Coya—”