"If Sidney loves Gladys only for gold, he will yet come back! he will yet be mine!"
It was impossible for me to misunderstand the girl's passionate meaning. I trembled at the recollection of the opportunities and temptations of the winter. For the first time a terrible realization of the child's Spanish inheritances seized me. I felt that she would never acknowledge moral barriers to be a final restraint to her denied destiny; never be able to resist the undisciplined desires of her heart.
For the present I could not hope to unfold the immoral, or impossible consequences of Sidney Sanderson's return. Nothing but time and angelic patience would enable me to make plain to the ignorant girl the arbitrary laws of fate.
CHAPTER XXIII.
The sun had departed for the day, the evening had flushed and died in the cool arms of night.
In the chamber of death there was now the breathless calm which follows when all has been done.
Before the little Virgin, and about the spotless bed, where in purest linen slept the mother of the Doña Maria, holy candles had been lighted. Still unmolested stood the small stand covered with a fine drawn linen cover, upon which had rested for weeks the tumblers and bottles needed now no longer.
"See," the Doña Maria said tenderly, "see the spoon in the potion I had prepared but a moment before the poor suffering body found peace."