orked until her shoulders
ached and her hands grew knotted. "One more year, only one more year,"
she thought; "then he shall go!" And through all the weary toil these
words echoed like a chant--"One more year--only one more!"

Two months passed, and then the spring came to the winterless land--came
with the yellow jasmine. "But four months now, and he shall go," said
Miss Elisabetha, in her silent musings over the bag of coin. "I have
shortened the time by double tasks." Lightly she stepped about the
house, counted her orange-buds, and reckoned up the fish. She played
the cathedral organ now on Sundays, making inward protest after every
note, and sitting rigidly with her back toward the altar in the little
high-up gallery during the sermon, as much as to say: "It is only my
body which is here. Behold! I do not even bow down in the house of
Rimmon." Thus laboring early and late, with heart, and hand, and
strength, she saw but little of Doro, save at meals and through his one
hour of listless study; but the hidden hope was a comforter, and she
worked and trusted on. There was one little gleam of light: he had begun
to play again on his guitar, softly, furtively, and as it were in
secret. But she heard him, and was cheered.

One evening, toiling home through the white sand after a late
music-lesson, laden with a bag of flour which she would not trust Viny
to buy, she heard a girl's voice singing. It was a plaintive, monotonous
air that she sang, simple as a Gregorian chant; but her voice was a
velvet contralto, as full of rich tones as a peach is full of
lusciousness. The contralto voice is like the violoncello.

"The voice is not bad," thought Miss Elisabetha, listening critically,
"but there is a certain element of the _sauvage_ in it. No lady, no
person of culture, would permit herself to sing in that way; it must be
one of the Minorcans."

Still, in spite of prejudices, the music in her turned her steps toward
the voice; her slippers made no sound, and she found it. A young girl, a
Minorcan, sat under a bower of jasmine, leaning back against her lover's
breast; her dark eyes were fixed on the evening star, and she sang as
the bird sings, naturally, unconsciously, for the pure pleasure of
singing. She was a pretty child. Miss Elisabetha knew her
well--Catalina, one of a thriftless, olive-skinned family down in the
town. "Not fourteen, and a lover already," thought the old maid with
horror. "Would it be of any use, I