In _Calandria_, the story opens with the death of Guadalupe, an abandoned woman, poor and consumptive. The man of wealth, who betrayed her, has a lovely home and a beautiful daughter. Carmen, “the Calandria,” as she is nicknamed by those about her on account of her singing, the illegitimate daughter of Don Eduardo by Guadalupe, is left in poverty. An appeal, made in her behalf, by a priest to Don Eduardo fails to secure her full recognition and reception into his home, but leads to his arranging for her care in the tenement where she lives and where Guadalupe died. An old woman, Doña Pancha, who had been kind to her mother, receives the orphan into her home. Her son, Gabriel, an excellent young man, a cabinet-maker by trade, loves her, and she reciprocates his love. A neighbor in the tenement, Magdalena, exerts an unhappy influence upon Carmen, leading to estrangement between her and Doña Pancha. Magdalena encourages her to receive the attentions of a worthless and vicious, wealthy youth named Rosas. At a dance given in Magdalena’s room, Rosas is attentive, and Carmen, flattered and dazzled, is guilty of some indiscretions. This leads to a rupture between her and Gabriel. To escape the persecutions of Rosas, Carmen goes with the friendly priest to a retreat at some little distance. The troubles between the lovers approach adjustment, but at the critical moment Rosas appears upon the scene, and the girl, though she rejects him, is compromised. Gabriel stifles his love and actually casts her off. In despair, the girl yields to the appeals of Rosas, who promises marriage. He is false, and soon tiring, abandons her. From then her downward career is rapid and soon ends in suicide. EXTRACTS FROM CALANDRIA. And she sighed and spent long hours in gazing at the landscape; attentive to the rustling of the trees, to the flitting to and fro of the butterflies, to the echoes of the valley, which repeated, sonorously, the regular stroke of the woodman’s axe, to the rushing of the neighboring stream, to the cooing of the turtle-dove living in the neighboring cottonwood.