"See," the Doña Maria said tenderly, "see the spoon in the potion I had prepared but a moment before the poor suffering body found peace."
When I offered to remove the medicines, the devoted daughter was not willing.
"Touch not the table yet, kind Señora," she pleaded. "Wait until the dear body has been taken away; then will I find courage to disturb the tumblers that the dear hands once held."
As the Doña Maria spoke, Mariposilla entered the room, bearing a little cross of white roses. She laid it timidly upon the breast of her grandmother; then, frightened and hysterical, she fled from the bed.
"Poor child," said the Doña Maria, "she fears death greatly. She thinks only of the fire that must at first purify the soul, not of the joys of eternity.
"Go now, Señora, retire at once for the night. You are weary and in need of rest.
"I care not for company. I will remain alone with my mother and our blessed Lady. I desire to entreat that the sufferings of the dear one may be short.
"Surely the dear Lord will have mercy upon the aged one who has already endured so much upon earth."
"Good Doña Maria," I plead, "you will surely be ill if you kneel all night in prayer. To-morrow will be a sad, hard day, and without rest you will be unfit for its strain."
"No, Señora," she replied firmly; "I shall not be ill. After midnight I shall sleep; until then I shall pray."
I saw that my persuasions were in vain, and left her alone with her dead.
As I passed through the living-room to reach my own, I was startled by a white-robed figure in front of the Virgin's picture.
The full July moon, streaming through the open door, discovered touchingly the hopeless misery of Mariposilla. She was in her nightgown, gazing piteously into the illuminated face of the unsympathetic doll above the chimney shelf.
As I approached her, she turned sadly from the picture.
In the moonlight, I saw great tears shining in her eyes.
"She loves me not; she is angry and smiles no more," she said, despairingly.
The child's lovely face expressed so perfectly the agony of desertion that I felt powerless to comfort her. Her firm belief in the Virgin's displeasure had torn from her heart its last hope. For weeks she believed that the little mother would have mercy, would intercede for her, and restore in some miraculous way her lover; but to-night the Virgin would not smile. She refused to pity her sorrowful child.