nearly nine o’clock
They talked in whispers of their father and brothers , and when the Senora cried , they kissed her sobs into silence and wiped her tears away . In that hour , if Fray Ignatius had known it , they undid , in a great measure , the work to which he had given more than a month of patient and deeply-reflective labor . For with the girls , there was the wondrous charm of love and nature ; but with the priest , only a splendid ideal of a Church universal that was to swallow up all the claims of love and all the ties of nature . It was nearly nine o'clock when Antonia and Isabel returned to the parlor fire . Their hearts were full of sorrow for their mother , and of fears for their own future . For this confidence had shown them how firmly the refuge of the convent had been planted in the anxious ideas of the Senora . Fortunately , the cold had driven the servants either to the kitchen fire or to their beds , and they could talk over the subject without fear of interference .