"Inez, you crouch like a guilty being before me! Surely you have done nothing to blush for. Yet stranger step was never taken by a reasonable being. Inez, raise your head, and tell me what induced you to venture in this desolate region, alone, unprotected, and in disguise?"
Inez lifted slowly the once beautiful face, now haggard and pale. Anguish of spirit had left its impress on her dark brow, wrinkled by early care. Mournful was the expression of the large dark eyes raised to his face: "Dr. Bryant, I am alone in the wide, wide world--there are none to protect--none to care for me now! My father sleeps by Mañuel's side, in the churchyard, and I am the last of my house. The name of De Garcia, once so proud and honored, will become a byword for desolation and misery! I have said cursed was the hour of my birth! and I now say blessed is the hour of my last sleep! You see me here from necessity, not choice, for all places would be alike to me now; but I have been driven from my lonely hearth--I dared not stay, I flew to this dreary waste for peace--for protection! There is no rest, no peace for me, Not one is left to whom I can say, guard and keep me from harm! Alone, friendless, in this wide, bitter world!"
"Your language is strangely ambiguous, Inez! Can you not explicitly declare what danger threatens, and believe that all I can do to avert evil will gladly be done?"
"Dr. Bryant, the Padre is my most inveterate enemy! Is not this sufficient to account for my presence here?"
"Unfortunate girl! how have you incurred that man's hatred?"
"It is a long tale, and needless to repeat: enough, that he plotted my ruin--that the strong, silent walls of a far-off convent was my destination. And why?--That my flocks and lands might enrich his precious church. You look wonderingly upon me; strange language, this, I think you say, for a lamb of his flock. How dare you speak so irreverently of the holy man, consecrated priest of Rome as he is? Dr. Bryant, I am no Catholic, nor have I been since you have known me. It was my policy to appear passive. I attended mass, and sought the confessional, and all the while cursed him in my heart. I watched him, and saved your people from destruction. Would you know how? I heard whispered promises to meet at dead of night. I followed; I saw the meeting between an emissary of Santa Anna and my godly Padre. At imminent risk I listened to their plot. You were to be kept in ignorance of the powerful force hurrying on to destroy you. Santa Anna was to burst suddenly upon the town, and, ere you could receive reinforcements, capture the Alamo at a blow. Once in his possession, more than one of your people were to be handed over to the tender mercies of my holy confessor. I warned you of your danger, and happily you heeded the signs of the time; else you, too, would now molder beneath the walls of the Alamo. His prey escaped him, and with redoubled eagerness he sought to consummate my destruction. I was made a prisoner in my own home, ere the sod settled on my father's grave! I fled in the midnight hour, and you see me here! Dr. Bryant, I well-nigh cut short the knotted thread of my life; but one thing saved me, else my body would even now whirl along the channel of the river. When I parted from the blue-eyed, sainted Mary, she gave me this book, and asked me not only to read but follow its teachings. She clasped my hand, and told me to remember God, and the eternity which awaited me, and the judgment of that other, final world. Oh! if there be a heaven and a purgatory! a God and a judge! if I sink to perdition, one alone is to blame. He told me he had power to forgive my sins; that the more completely I obeyed him on earth, the more blessed I should be in heaven. Yet I have heard him lie, and seen him set aside the rules of humanity and the laws of God! Mary's Bible tells me 'to keep holy the Sabbath day.' Yet, from my childhood, I have seen our Priests at mass on Sabbath morning, and at monte and cock-fights on the evening of the same day! And I have seen them take from the widow, as the burial-fee of her husband, the last cow she possessed. I saw these things, and I said, there is no God, or he would not suffer such as these to minister as his chosen servants upon the earth. I said in my heart, purgatory is but a lie made to keep pace with their marvelous legends and frequent miracles! There is not a purgatory, or they would fear the retribution in store for them. I had none to teach me aright. I mocked at the thought of religion. I said there is none on the earth--it is merely a system of gain, and all that constitutes the difference is, that some are by nature more of devils, and others gifted with milder hearts. But I saw Mary--pure angel that she is--I saw her with the sick and the dying: she railed not at our priest, as he at her. She carried her Bible to the bed of death, and told them to look to God for themselves. She bade them leave off saint-worship, and cling to Jesus as their only Mediator. Peace followed her steps, and much good she would have done, but my Padre interfered, peremptorily ordered all good Papists to shun her as they would an incarnate demon, and frightened many into submission with his marvelous tales and threats of purgatory. I said to myself, if there be truth in God and religion, this Mary walketh in the right path, for like an angel of mercy and light she ever seems. She was the hope, the joy, the blessing of all who knew her. Oh! I will come to you, Mary, and learn of you, and die near, that you may be with me in the hour of rest."