her place entitled her to do, at the door of the audience chamber. She
guessed already, but in a moment she _heard_ from papa's lips what
was the nature of his errand. His daughter Catharine, he informed the
Don, had eloped from the convent of St. Sebastian, a place rich in
delight. Then he laid open the unparalleled ingratitude of such a step.
Oh, the unseen treasure that had been spent upon that girl! Oh, the
untold sums of money that he had sunk in that unhappy speculation! The
nights of sleeplessness suffered during her infancy! The fifteen years
of solicitude thrown away in schemes for her improvement! It would have
moved the heart of a stone. The _hidalgo_ wept copiously at his
own pathos. And to such a height of grandeur had he carried his Spanish
sense of the sublime, that he disdained to mention the pocket-
handkerchief which he had left at St. Sebastian's fifteen years ago, by
way of envelope for 'pussy,' and which, to the best of pussy's
knowledge, was the one sole memorandum of papa ever heard of at St.
Sebastian's. Pussy, however, saw no use in revising and correcting the
text of papa's remembrances. She showed her usual prudence, and her
usual incomparable decision. It did not appear, as yet, that she would
be reclaimed, or was at all suspected for the fugitive by her father.
For it is an instance of that singular fatality which pursued Catalina
through life, that, to her own astonishment, (as she now collected from
her father's conference,) nobody had traced her to Valladolid, nor had
her father's visit any connection with suspicious travelling in that
direction. The case was quite different. Strangely enough, her street
row had thrown her into the one sole household in all Spain that had an
official connection with St. Sebastian's. That convent had been founded
by the young cavalier's family; and, according to the usage of Spain,
the young man (as present representative of his house) was the
responsible protector of the establishment. It was not to the Don, as
harborer of his daughter, but to the Don, as _ex officio_ visitor