"My mother unfortunately is dead," Mariquita informed her, with a simplicity that made the wide-open blue eyes open wider still, and caused their owner to decide that the girl was "awfully Spanish."
Miss Sarah Jackson assumed (with admirable readiness) an expression of pathos.
"How very sad! I do apologize," she murmured, as if the decease of her aunt were partly her fault.
The young man was amused—not for the first time—by his fellow-traveller: but he did not show it.
"You couldn't help it," said Mariquita.
("How very Spanish!" thought her cousin.)
"Of course you did not know," the girl added, "or you would not have said anything to hurt me. And my mother's death happened five years ago."
"Not really!" cried the deceased lady's niece. "How wholly unexpected!"
"It wasn't very sudden," Mariquita explained. "She was ill for three months."
"My father was quite unaware of it—entirely so. He died, in fact, just about that time. And Aunt Margaret and he were (so unfortunately!) hardly on terms. Personally I always (though a child) had the strongest affection for Aunt Margaret. I took her part about her marriage. Papa's own second marriage struck me as less defensible."