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for informing you, that I can favour your disguise no longer. Should the prioress be acquainted with my conduct, she might not be contented with dismissing me her service: out of revenge, she might accuse me of having profaned the convent, and cause me to be thrown into the prisons of the Inquisition."
Fruitless were my attempts to conquer his resolution. He denied me all future entrance into the garden; and Agnes persevered in neither letting me see or hear from her. In about a fortnight after, a violent illness which had seized my father obliged me to set out for Andalusia. I hastened thither, and, as I imagined, found the marquis at the point of death. Though, on its first appearance, his complaint was declared mortal, he lingered out several months; during which, my attendance upon him in his malady, and the occupation of settling his affairs after his decease, permitted not my quitting Andalusia. Within these four days I returned to Madrid, and, on ar-riving
