“Father! Father! ’tis that which causes my torment! Happy had it been for me, had my life been passed among the vicious and abandoned! Had I never heard pronounced the name of virtue! ’Tis my unbounded adoration of religion; ’tis my soul’s exquisite sensibility of the beauty of fair and good, that loads me with shame! that hurries me to perdition! Oh! that I had never seen these abbey walls!”

“How, Rosario? When we last conversed, you spoke in a different tone. Is my friendship then become of such little consequence? Had you never seen these abbey walls, you never had seen me: can that really be your wish?”

“Had never seen you?” repeated the novice, starting from the bank, and grasping the friar’s hand with a frantic air; “You? You? Would to God, that lightning had blasted them, before you ever met my eyes! Would to God! that I were never to see you more, and could forget that I had ever seen you!”