"I blame him not," she cried, passionately. "It is the wicked, wicked Gladys who has stolen his love. I knew she would coax him from me when she sent so often her beautiful face to his mother. "She loved him much, I was sure, but he said always that he loved her not in return; that she made him most tired, when he must listen to her learning and long words. "That he loved none but me--poor, little Mariposilla, who knew nothing but to love him only." "Yes, dear," I said; "you have loved as few ever love. I pity the man who has thrown lightly away your warm, true heart; but I know that after a time you will cease to pine. You will see that Sidney gave you up, not because Miss Carpenter was more beautiful, or that he loved her more, but because she had millions of dollars to make his life luxurious and idle. "Be a brave girl," I continued, noticing with pleasure that the child had brightened visibly at my words. "Be good and brave for your own sake, and for the sake of the dear Doña Maria. "Come home before you are missed, or your mother will be greatly distressed by your absence." Obediently she followed me from the room, and down the ladder. As we drove away from the grounds she threw her arms about my neck and sobbed pitifully. "Dear, kind Señora," she cried, "I will be good; indeed I will be good. "If Sidney loves Gladys only for gold, he will yet come back! he will yet be mine!" It was impossible for me to misunderstand the girl's passionate meaning. I trembled at the recollection of the opportunities and temptations of the winter. For the first time a terrible realization of the child's Spanish inheritances seized me. I felt that she would never acknowledge moral barriers to be a final restraint to her denied destiny; never be able to resist the undisciplined desires of her heart. For the present I could not hope to unfold the immoral, or impossible consequences of Sidney Sanderson's return. Nothing but time and angelic patience would enable me to make plain to the ignorant girl the arbitrary laws of fate. CHAPTER XXIII. The sun had departed for the day, the evening had flushed and died in the cool arms of night. In the chamber of death there was now the breathless calm which follows when all has been done. Before the little Virgin, and about the spotless bed, where in purest linen slept the mother of the Doña Maria, holy candles had been lighted. Still unmolested stood the small stand covered with a fine drawn linen cover, upon which had rested for weeks the tumblers and bottles needed now no longer. "See," the Doña Maria said tenderly, "see the spoon in the potion I had prepared but a moment before the poor suffering body found peace." When I offered to remove the medicines, the devoted daughter was not willing. "Touch not the table yet, kind Señora," she pleaded. "Wait until the dear body has been taken away; then will I find courage to disturb the tumblers that the dear hands once held."