We all confessed that we had never seen anyone more beautiful. The theatrical yet natural character which she assumed had driven away every vestige of her depression. Never before had the child appeared so gay. Mrs. Wilbur's most insinuating remark had now no sting. The joyous present was enough; she would not believe that the future might be full of tears.
I remembered, long afterwards, how Sidney Sanderson had forgotten to look bored; and how both he and Mariposilla had neglected everyone in the room but each other, like two happy children in their devotion.
Not once again while we remained in the hotel did I see a shadow upon Mariposilla's brow. In vain did Mrs. Wilbur endeavor to excite her jealousy. The child was too happy to doubt. Each moment she grew more beautiful, maturing almost as we watched her, with the ripening influences of her strong first love.
The breath of Easter was in the air. It was hard, even in that last penitential week, to renounce the seductive wooings of those first April days. In the little Episcopal chapel, or in the venerable Mission, we acknowledged each evening our infirmities; but with all our abnegation, there was for some of us an heterodox satisfaction in hastening away from our prayers.
We wanted to exult, rather than to bemoan "our manifold sins and wickedness."
We were not sufficiently impressed with our depravity to smell brimstone, when the air was richly purified with the scent of orange blossoms and millions of newborn roses.
Doubtless our lenten orthodoxy would have developed more strongly in the cutting blast of a Manitoba blizzard. We would have felt more contrite, drawn by the persuasive chastisements of a sweet spring cyclone. But in such days as the ones which followed each other like glad birds in a flock, it was difficult to assume a despondency adequate to the penitential demand.
The Gold of Ophir rose and Mariposilla were now blooming together. The old house was bright, outside and in, with light and glory.
From the veranda and the crest of the roof, long sprays of dazzling bloom swept voluptuously to the sky. In the blushing hearts of myriads of buds and blossoms, the sun whispered each day his rapturous secrets.
Wonderful from its first hour of triumph until its last pale, dilapidated petals have fallen to the ground--a moral to its transient magnificence--this rose is tragic.