Lola found herself walking up the cañon, between the rocky hills beside the dry _arroyo_. Summer dust whitened the road, and rose to her tread in alkaline clouds. It was warm, too, under the remorseless Colorado sun, but nothing touched Lola. She was struggling with a thing that was half anguish and half anger, and that lifted upon her a face more and more convincing in its ugliness. It seemed impossible to doubt that Jane had indeed worked the wrong of which Señora Vigil accused her--although Jane's own word, and no word of the señora's, bore this conviction to Lola's breast. Jane had faltered in the trust which she had assumed, and now, confronted with the embarrassment of facing Lola's father in a plain confession of her delinquency, she hesitated and was miserable and afraid and reluctant. Rather than state her situation she would even keep Lola from school. "It isn't that I care for that!" throbbed Lola. It was not the stoppage of her own course, indeed, although this was a misery, but the loss of trust in all humanity which distrust of Jane seemed to the girl to inflict upon her. If Jane were not true, none could be; and the suspicion and unrest rioted back again to the bosom which belief in Jane and the world had softened and calmed. There was nothing to do. Lola's father could easily repair Jane's shortcoming, but not without having an explanation of the facts of the case. The facts of the case he must never know. Even in her pain and indignation, Lola never made a question of this. "Suppose it is true!" thought the girl, suddenly overcome by a new tide of feeling. "What am I blaming her for? She would never have fixed the house or bought things for herself! She did it all for me. And although I would rather have gone to school than have the piano, am I to blame _tia_ for not knowing this? She never thought where she was coming out. She just went on and on. And now that there is no more money, she is frightened and sorry and ashamed. She has done everything for me--even herself she has fairly made over to please me. Poor _tia_! Oh, ungrateful that I am to have been thinking unkindly of her!" Suddenly all the bitterness left her, like an evil thing exorcised by the first word of pitying tenderness. Tears stole sweetly to her eyes. Peace came upon her shaken spirit. The day had been full of strange revelations; and now it showed her how good for the human heart it is to be able to pity weakness, to love, to forbear and to forgive.