For love did not suffice to you; ambition began to stir within you, and you called it 'love.' You said, 'It grieved you that I was poor; that you could not restore to me the luxury and wealth I had lost.' (Alas! why did you turn so incredulously from my assurance, that in you, and you alone, were centred my ambition and pride ?) You declared that the vain readers of the stars had foretold at your cradle that you were predestined to lofty honours and dazzling power, and that the prophecy would work out its own fulfilment.

You left me to seek in Madrid your relation who had risen into the favour of a minister, and from whose love you expected to gain an opening to your career.

Do you remember how we parted?
how you kissed away my tears, and how they gushed forth again?
how again and again you said, 'Farewell!' and again and again returned as if we could never part?
And I took my babe, but a few weeks born, from her cradle, and placed her in thy arms, and bade thee see that she had already learned thy smile; and were these the signs of falsehood?
Oh, how I pined for the sound of thy footstep when thou wert gone! how all the summer had vanished from the landscape; and how, turning to thy child, I fancied I again beheld thee! The day after thou hadst left me there was a knock at the cottage; the nurse opened it, and there entered your former rival, whom my father had sought to force upon me, the richest of the descendants of the Moor, Arraez Ferrares.

Why linger on this hateful subject?
He had tracked us to our home, he had learned thy absence, he came to insult me with his vows.

By the Blessed Mother, whom thou hast taught me to adore, by the terror and pang of death, by my hopes of Heaven, I am innocent, Roderigo, I am innocent! Oh, how couldst thou be so deceived?
He quitted the cottage, discomfited and enraged; again he sought me, and again and again; and when the door was closed upon him, he waylaid my steps.