“Seat yourself by my side, Matilda,” said he, assuming a look of firmness, though carefully avoiding the least mixture of severity; “Listen to me patiently, and believe, that in what I shall say, I am not more influenced by my own interest than by yours: believe, that I feel for you the warmest friendship, the truest compassion, and that you cannot feel more grieved than I do, when I declare to you that we must never meet again.”

“Ambrosio!” she cried, in a voice at once expressive of surprise and sorrow.

“Be calm, my friend! My Rosario! Still let me call you by that name so dear to me! Our separation is unavoidable; I blush to own, how sensibly it affects me.⁠—But yet it must be so. I feel myself incapable of treating you with indifference, and that very conviction obliges me to insist upon your departure. Matilda, you must stay here no longer.”