SCENE I

_Edward listens at door R., then comes up C._

EDWARD. I hear nothing. Has she recovered consciousness? To think how close a thing to life is death! [_Pause._] They believe that I must give up my beloved girl! They suppose me capable of crediting Don Lorenzo's absurd tale. Poor scholar! Why, he doesn't know what he is saying. [_Pause._] And even if his assertion were true, would that make Inés other than the loveliest, the most adorable of women? Mine she will be, though I should have to cast myself at my mother's feet and bathe them with my tears. Don Lorenzo must consent, even if we have to gag him and put him into a strait-jacket. And that wretched beggar from whom the ill-advised philosopher has caught his delirium must be sent away, far away from everybody. How will my poor Inés bear up against the blow her father has inflicted upon her? [_Again approaches the door and listens._] Nothing, nothing. Silence, always the same silence. [_Comes down._] Her father! her own father! Heaven help me, but I almost hate the man. [_With increasing passion._] The madman! How he delighted to torture her! Her father!—that brainless scholar! an atheist clothed in sanctity! a new Don Quixote _minus_ wit and _plus_ pedantry! a mock Bayard of honour! What sort of father is he who pretends to a reputation for virtue through his daughter's broken heart? A fig for such virtue! Vice itself is more lovable. No one comes, and the hours go by—ah, I hear somebody coming at last.