"If only you will be patient and true to your best ambitions, I am sure that a great happiness will some day come into your life. Try to be contented. Be a dutiful daughter to your dear mother, who has seen so much sorrow, and has left only her precious child. Please her in all things that are possible, and if you will do this I am sure that after a time you will understand how wise and unselfish she has always been." Instantly the girl released herself, while she faced me with a passionate despair I will never forget. "I will do all," she cried, "but marry Arturo. If I do not that I have done nothing. The priest and my mother and the sisters at the convent will curse me if I refuse. They will call me a shame, and, although I love not Arturo, they would sell me for his gold." "No, dear," I entreated, "no one will compel you to marry Arturo. Believe me, you shall do as you please, only you must not allow unjust suspicions to make you miserable. Think no more for the present of marriage, try only to learn things that will fit you for life and happiness; after a time, if one should come whom you love, you can then not only make him joyful with your great beauty, but he will love and respect you, because you have acquired the knowledge that makes life agreeable and comfortable long after youth and beauty have flown." "The señora is most wise," the child assented calmly. "Perhaps she will teach me a little from her books, that I, too, may learn of the great world; for, indeed, I will be good," she cried, brightening with the determination. "Yes, Mariposilla," I replied; "each day you shall have a lesson in English, and soon you will be able to enjoy all that I enjoy; only in return you must teach me Spanish, that I may also understand the language and literature of your famous race." Thus the compact was sealed, and each day afterward found Mariposilla seated quietly in my room, poring over an allotted task. Her stormy passions seemed stilled. If the wind of destiny sometimes shrieked in my watchful ears, it more frequently sighed plaintively as I devised new educational schemes for my protégée. No one was more delighted over Mariposilla's apparent reformation than the Doña Maria. Not only did the lessons progress with astonishing regularity, but work on the altar cloth, which had been for long intervals neglected so that its various stages of completion were easily detected in the several soiled sections of the linen, was resumed with steady, plodding determination. Now but one row of the little Jesus stitch remained to be done in the beautiful cloth ordered months before by a wealthy devotee. The Doña Maria was in ecstasies when her daughter brought the task finished, two days before Christmas; at the same time begging permission to ride to Pasadena that she might receive for her labor the great sum of thirty dollars.