Mariposa had come to the house of Mrs. Shackleton burning with a sense of the wrongs her mother had suffered at the hands of this woman and her dead husband. She had thought little of what the interview would be like, and now, with the keen, hard, and astonished eyes of Bessie upon her, she felt that something more than pride and indignation must help her through. The world’s diplomacy of tongue and brain was an unsuspected art to her. “I--I--” she stammered irresolutely, “have changed my mind since I talked with Mr. Shackleton.” “Changed your mind! But why? What’s made you change your mind in so short a time?” “Many things,” said the girl, with her face flushing deeply under Bessie’s unflinching stare. “There have been changes--in--in--circumstances--and in me. My mother was anxious for my advancement. Now she is dead and--it doesn’t matter.” It was certainly not a brilliant way out of the difficulty. A faint smile wrinkled the loose skin round Mrs. Shackleton’s eyes. “Oh, my dear,” she said, with a slight touch of impatience in her voice. “If that’s all, I guess we needn’t worry about it. People die, and we lose our energies and ambition, so we just want to lie round and mourn. But at your age that don’t last long. You’ve got to make your future yourself, and now’s your chance. It just comes once or twice in a lifetime, and the people who get there are the people who know enough to snatch it as it comes by.” Mariposa’s irresolution had passed. She realized that she had not merely to state her intentions, but to fight a will unused to defeat. “I can’t go,” she said quietly; “I understand that all you say is perfectly true. You probably think I am silly and ungrateful. I don’t think I am either, but that’s because I know what I feel. I thank you very much, but I can’t accept it.” She rose to her feet. Bessie saw that she was pale--evidently agitated. “Sit down,” she said, indicating the chair again. “Now let me hear your reasons, my dear girl. People don’t throw up the chance of a lifetime for nothing. What’s behind all this?” There was a pause. Mariposa said slowly: “I don’t want to accept it. I don’t want to take the money or be under any obligation.” “You were willing to be under the obligation, as you call it, a few weeks ago?” Bessie’s voice was as cold as steel. From the moment she had entered the room she had felt an instinctive antagonism between herself and her husband’s eldest child. It would become a hatred in time. The girl’s slow and reluctant way of speaking seemed to indicate that she expressed herself with difficulty, like one who, under pressure, tells the truth. “My mother wanted me to accept anything that was for my own benefit. Now she is dead. I am my own mistress. I grieve or hurt no one but myself if I refuse your offer. And, as things are now, it is better for me to refuse it.”