It had been arranged that we should go to San Gabriel late in the afternoon of Christmas Day.
As the time approached for our departure, I grew more reluctant to leave the ranch. I was still loath to submit to the restraints of a hotel. Had I dared, I would have abandoned the visit. It irritated me to submit heroically to exile from Paradise, but there now seemed no alternative.
The little valise had been packed for hours; the precious evening frock safely folded away in its scented wrappings, together with little bits of finery to be worn at the hotel. Mariposilla, radiant and expectant, counted the moments which delayed our departure.
Even the grandmother was now comfortably restored, having awakened from her long sleep fresh and docile.
No vestige of excuse remained to justify a change in our plans. An ordained agreement of trifles appeared conspiring with Fate.
As we bade farewell to the Doña Maria, I found it impossible to resist the unhappy presentiments which thronged our departure.
When we drove away with Sidney and passed between the great century plants, a sudden fear seized my vacillating will. I knew in an instant that I dreaded the possible consequences of what I had undertaken.
In the front seat of the trap, with Sidney, sat Mariposilla, transformed by excessive happiness and conventional garb into another creature. Never again would she be the child she had been even that same morning, when she had romped upon the Bermuda grass with Marjorie, flushed with pleasure over her Christmas trifles. Now another flush was upon her cheeks, another light shone in her eyes; for, even as I looked, Mariposilla had bidden farewell forever to the restraints of her simple, beautiful childhood.
Had I created a scene by turning back in our journey into the world, it is hardly possible that I could have obviated the difficulties of Mariposilla's emancipation from the life she had determined to escape.
As I continued to face the responsibilities of her case I grew more tranquil. I reasoned that it was perhaps best not to resist the unmistakable leadings of Fate, which seemed to point to a destiny for the girl different from the one desired by the Doña Maria. Her remarkable beauty, the truly good blood which ran in her veins, to say nothing of her laudable ambition and determination not to accept a husband dictated by the priest or her relatives, justified me in the belief that she had outgrown the old life, which was now each day growing more and more intolerable.