"I have only told you the truth," she said, without the slightest compassion for her daughter's suffering, because she could not understand it. "I have warned you and done my duty. I shall not be here to look after you and protect you, and all that I can do is to warn you. The truth stands there, and you must recognize it. If you love, if you wed, you will not only ruin your own life, but that of the man who tempts you to marriage. You have that to keep before you always—always. If I had done it I should not be the wreck I am today; but I had no one to warn me against the fate I was preparing for myself. Just keep these words ever fresh within your memory, and you will be safe: 'The curse of Pocahontas rests upon me!'"
[CHAPTER II.]
Shortly after that, to the surprise of everybody, Mrs. de Barryos did die.
People had expected that she was going to be one of those who lived eternally, eternally complaining, and her death came in the nature of a sort of shock to the community. Carlita was looked upon with general favor, and there were those who, while they sighed, exclaimed to each other consolingly:
"Well it is the first freedom of any sort the poor child ever had. She will grieve, of course, but as soon as the first shock has worn off, she'll be happier than she ever was in her life before."
But any kind of a mother is better than no mother at all, and there was the sincerest sorrow in Carlita's heart. There was enough of the warm Mexican blood in her veins to fill her with a passion that was beyond the understanding of those colder, more northern folk, and she had loved her mother very sincerely. She was frightened, too, at the time of her mother's death by the remembrance of that curse which her mother had impressed upon her many times before the end came, and felt that shrinking sense of loneliness, of bitter oppression, of isolation from all the world that is so hard to bear.
When Jose de Barryos died he left his fortune, and it was considerable, equally to his wife and daughter, the daughter under her guardianship and that of a brother who did not long survive him, so that at the time of Mrs. de Barryos' death there was considerable interest felt as to who she had appointed guardian of her daughter in her own place, Carlita being still under legal age. Some said that she would appoint her husband's sister, Mrs. Erminie Blanchard but there were others who knew that there had not been sufficient friendship between the two women for that, and there was a rustle of excitement felt when two ladies in mourning arrived on the day of the funeral, two women whom none of them had ever seen before, but who went at once to the great de Barryos mansion, for it was nothing less in that country, and established themselves in the house.
There was considerable talk among the neighbors, who stood off and looked at them from a distance like frightened sheep, feeling somehow an embarrassment that they were never known to exhibit before.