ath."

"Indeed, she has not eaten for ten days,--hardly since that day;"
and Margarita and her mother exchanged looks. It was not necessary to
further define the day.

"Juan Can says he thinks he will never be seen here again," continued
Margarita.

"The saints grant it, then," said Marda, hotly, "if it is he has cost
the Senorita all this! I am that turned about in my head with it all,
that I've no thoughts to think; but plain enough it is, he is mixed up
with whatever 'tis has gone wrong."

"I could tell what it is," said Margarita, her old pertness coming
uppermost for a moment; "but I've got no more to say, now the Senorita's
lying on her bed, with the face she's got. It's enough to break your
heart to look at her. I could just go down on my knees to her for all
I've said; and I will, and to Saint Francis too! She's going to be with
him before long; I know she is."

"No," said the wiser, older Marda. "She is not so ill as you think. She
is young. It's the heart's gone out of her; that's all. I've been that
way myself. People are, when they're young."

"I'm young!" retorted Margarita. "I've never been that way."

"There's many a mile to the end of the road, my girl," said Marda,
significantly; "and 'It's ill boasting the first day out,' was a proverb
when I was your age!"

Marda had never been much more than half-way fond of this own child
of hers. Their natures were antagonistic. Traits which, in Margarita's
father, had embittered many a day of Marda's early married life, were
perpetually cropping out in Margarita, making between the mother and
daughter a barrier which even parental love was not always strong enough
to surmount. And, as was inevitable, this antagonism was constantly
leading to things which seemed to Margarita, and in fact were, unjust
and ill-founded.

"She's always flinging out at me, whatever I do," thought Margarita.
"I know one thing; I'll never tell her what the Senorita's told me;
never,--not till after she's gone."

A sudden suspicion flashed into Margarita's mind. She seated herself on
the bench outside the kitchen door, to wrestle with it. What if it were
not to a convent at all, but to Alessandro, that the Senorita meant to
go! No; that was preposterous. If it had been that, she would have gone
with him in the outset. Nobody who was plotting to run away with a lover
ever wore such a look as the Senorita wore now. Margarita dismissed the
thought; yet it left its trace. She woul