“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: