an indeterminate time. He had come there purposely to reveal his
long-cherished love; to conjure Marie to bless him with the promise of
her hand; and, if successful, to return, in two short months, for the
celebration of their marriage, according to their own secret rites,
ere the ceremony was performed in the sight of the whole Catholic
world. The intermarriages of first cousins had been so common an
occurrence in his family, that Ferdinand, in spite of some tremblings,
as a lover, had regarded his final union with Marie with almost as
much certainty, and as a thing of course, as his uncle himself.

The effects of that agitating interview between father and daughter
had been visible to Ferdinand; but he attributed it, very naturally,
to the cause privately assigned for it by his kinsman--Marie's first
conviction that her father's days were numbered. He had been greatly
shocked at the change in Henriquez's appearance, and deeply affected
at the solemn and startling earnestness with which he consigned his
child to his care, beseeching him, under all circumstances, to love
and cherish her. His nephew could scarcely understand, then, such
earnest pleadings. Alas! ere his life closed, their cause was clear
enough.

Unconscious that her father and cousin were together, or of the nature
of their conversation, Marie had joined them, unexpectedly, ere the
interview was over. From her father's lips, and in a tone of trembling
agitation, she heard that his long-cherished prayer was granted, and
that she was his nephew's plighted, bride. He joined their hands,
blessed them, and left them alone together, ere she had had power
to utter a single word; and when voice was recalled by the tender,
earnest accents of her cousin, beseeching her to ratify her father's
consent--to say she would learn to love him, if she did not then; that