and was related in the fourth degree to the first wife, as
appears from the dispensation granted to make the marriage valid
on the 16th of October, 1509. Of this marriage Teresa was the
third child.

Dona Beatriz died young, and the eldest daughter, Maria de
Cepeda, took charge of her younger sisters--they were two--and
was as a second mother to them till her marriage, which took
place in 1531, when the Saint was in her sixteenth year. But as
she was too young to be left in charge of her father's house, and
as her education was not finished, she was sent to the
Augustinian monastery, the nuns of which received young girls,
and brought them up in the fear of God. [2] The Saint's own
account is that she was too giddy and careless to be trusted at
home, and that it was necessary to put her under the care of
those who would watch over her and correct her ways.
She remained a year and a half with the Augustinian nuns, and all
the while God was calling her to Himself. She was not willing to
listen to His voice; she would ask the nuns to pray for her that
she might have light to see her way; "but for all this," she
writes, "I wished not to be a nun." [3] By degrees her will
yielded, and she had some inclination to become a religious at
the end of the eighteen months of her stay, but that was all.
She became ill; her father removed her, and the struggle within
herself continued,--on the one hand, the voice of God calling
her; on the other, herself labouring to escape from her vocation.

At last, after a struggle which lasted three months, she made up
her mind, and against her inclination, to give up the world.
She asked her father's leave, and was refused. She besieged him