I had now fully determined to educate Mariposilla, to fit her, with the Doña Maria's permission, for intimate contact with the dangerous world.
So infatuated I became with my plans that I again misunderstood the girl, while I foolishly lost sight of her race inheritances.
I thought she would revive, after a time, as an American girl would have revived. I expected her to be restored, with new beauties of mind and character.
As the days went by and nothing unusual happened, I told myself, joyfully, that experience was working the cure. I believed that soon a womanly scorn would heal effectually the wound which Sidney Sanderson had inflicted.
The girl had not grown less beautiful. With her trouble there had come into her face, after the first wild paroxysms of grief, a look that I could not interpret. I know now that it was the reflection of hope, a hungry, superstitious expectancy that tugged hourly at her heart.
Sidney's parting note had inspired in the ignorant girl the faith that he would return.
She had grown very gentle. She went regularly to mass, and arranged flowers each day in front of the little Spanish Virgin. One day I noticed that she had wreathed the picture in ivy, and ever after the grotesque little Mother displayed her finery subdued by the dark, cool leaves.
In the child's own room was carefully treasured every trifling relic of Sidney's past devotion. She had decked the whitewashed walls, in imitation of Ethel Walton's æsthetic chamber, with every small, sweet souvenir of the winter. The favors she had received at the eventful holiday cotillion surrounded the little looking-glass. Above her bed hung a cane and a cast-off tennis cap of Sidney's; while tenderly hidden from sight, except when she opened the drawer each day to weep, were the innumerable trinkets and gifts that her false lover had given her.
Every empty candy-box and every withered flower had been lovingly saved.