As soon as the singing teacher heard that Mariposa had a voice he had espied in her the object of his search and begged her to sing for him. But she had refused. She had not sung a note since her mother’s death. The series of unforeseen and disastrous developments that had followed the opening scene of the drama in which she found herself the central figure had robbed her of all desire to use the gift which was her one source of fortune. Sometimes, alone in her room, her fingers running over the keys of the piano, she wondered dreamily what it would be like once again to hear the full, vibrating sounds booming out from her chest. Now and then she had tried a note or two or an old familiar strain, then had stopped, repelled and disenchanted. Her voice sounded coarse and strange. And while it quivered on the air there came a rush of exquisitely painful memories. But one afternoon, a few days after her encounter with Essex, she had come in early to find the lower hall full of the sound of a high, crystal clear soprano, which was pouring from the teacher’s room. She listened interested, held in a spell of envious attention. It was evidently a girl of whom Pierpont had spoken to her, who possessed the one voice of promise he had yet found, and who was studying for the stage. Leaning over the stair-rail, Mariposa felt, with a tingling at her heart, that this singing had a finish and poise hers entirely lacked, and yet the voice was thin, colorless and fragile compared with her own. With all its flawless ease and fluency it had not the same splendor of tone, the same passionate thrill. She went slowly upstairs, pursued by the beautiful sounds, bending over the railing to catch them more fully, with, for the first time since her mother’s death, the desire to emulate, to be up and doing, to hear once more the rich notes swelling from her throat. “Some day _I’ll_ sing for him,” she said to herself, with her head up and her eyes bright, “and he’ll see that none of them has a voice like mine.” The stir of enthusiasm was still on her when she shut the door of her own room. It was hard to settle to anything with this sudden welling up of old ambitions disturbing the apathy following on grief. She was standing, looking down on the garden--a prospect which had long lost its forlornness to her accustomed eyes--when a knock at the door fell gratefully on her ears. Even the society of Mrs. Garcia, with her head tied up in the white duster, had its advantages now and then. But it was not Mrs. Garcia, but Mrs. Willers whom the opening door revealed. Mariposa’s welcome was warmed not only by the desire for companionship but by genuine affection. She had come to regard Mrs. Willers as her best friend.