With a heart that overflowed with the warm thoughts of love and youth, the ghostlike shapes that flitted round her, the icy forms, the rigid ceremonials of that life, which is but the mimicry of death, appalled and shocked her.

That she had preserved against a royal and most perilous, because unscrupulous suitor, her fidelity to the absent Fonseca, was her sole consolation.
Another circumstance had combined with the loss of her protectress and the absence of Don Martin to sadden her heart and dispose her to the cloister.

On the deathbed of the old woman, who had been to her as a mother, she had learned a secret hitherto concealed from her tender youth.

Dark and tragic were the influences of the star which had shone upon her birth, gloomy the heritage of memories associated with her parentage.

A letter, of which she now became the guardian and treasurer--a letter, in her mother's hand-woke tears more deep and bitter than she had ever shed for herself.