"Yes; I wish you would ask Don Jose if he will, through his friends at Oporto, find out whether my cousin's mother was there at the time the French entered, and if she was, whether she got through that horrible business unhurt. I have been hearing about it from my friends, who were a couple of days there before the force marched to Braga. They tell me that, by all accounts, the business was even worse than we feared. The French came upon some of their comrades tied to posts in the great square, horribly mutilated, some of them with their eyes put out, still living, and after that they spared no one; and upon my word, I can hardly blame them, and in fact don't blame them at all, so long as they only their vengeance on men. The people made it worse for themselves by keeping up a desultory fire from windows and housetops when resistance had long ceased to be of any use; and, of course, seeing their comrades shot down in this way infuriated the troops still further. "I don't suppose it will make the slightest difference in the world to my cousin whether her mother is dead or not, for I fancy from what Mary said that her mother never cared for her in the slightest. Possibly she was jealous that the child had the first place in the father's affections. However that may be, there was certainly no great love between them, and of course her subsequent treatment of my cousin destroyed any affection that might have existed. That either by some deed executed at the time of marriage, or by Portuguese law, Mary has a right to the estate at her mother's death, is clear from the efforts they made to get her to renounce that right. Still, there is no more chance of her ever inheriting it than there would be of her flying. As a nun she would naturally have to renounce all property, and no doubt the law of this priest-ridden country would decide that she had done so. She tells me--and I am sure, truly--that she refused to open her lips to say a single word when she was forced to go through the ceremony; but as, no doubt, a score of witnesses would be brought forward to swear that she answered all the usual questions and renounced all worldly possessions, that denial would go for nothing." "Besides," Herrara said, "it would never do for her to set foot in Portugal. She would be seized as an escaped nun immediately, and would never be heard of again."