thought,
and if she failed to perceive the full significance of her act, then its
morality is placed beyond question.

However this may be, leaving aside psychological investigations that I
have no authority for making, since I am not acquainted with Pepita
Ximenez, it is quite certain that she lived in edifying harmony with the
old man during three years, that she nursed him and waited upon him with
admirable devotion, and that in his last painful and fatal sickness she
ministered to him and watched over him with tender and unwearying
affection, until he expired in her arms, leaving her heiress to a large
fortune.

Although more than two years have passed since she lost her mother, and
more than a year and a half since she was left a widow, Pepita still
wears the deepest mourning. Her sedateness, her retired manner of
living, and her melancholy, are such that one might suppose she lamented
the death of her husband as much as though he had been a handsome young
man. Perhaps there are some who imagine or suspect that Pepita's pride,
and the certain knowledge she now has of the not very poetical means by
which she has become rich, trouble her conscience with something more
than doubt; and that, humiliated in her own eyes and in those of the
world, she seeks, in austerity and retirement, consolation for the
vexations of her mind, and balm for her wounded heart.

People here, as everywhere, have a great love of money. Perhaps I am
wrong in saying, _as everywhere_; in populous cities, in the great
centers of civilization, there are other distinctions which are prized
as much as or even more than money, because they smooth the way to
fortune, and give credit and consideration in the eyes of the world; but
in smaller places, where neither literary nor scientific fame, nor, as a
rule, distinction of manners, nor elegance, nor discretion and amenity
in intercourse, are apt to be either valued or understood, there is no
other way by which to grade the social hierarchy than the possession of
more or less money, or of something worth money. Pepita, then, in the
possession of money, and beauty besides, and making a good use, as every
one says, of her riches, is to-day respected and esteemed in an
extraordinary degree. From this and the surrounding villages, the most
eligible suitors, the wealthiest young men, have crowded to pay their
court to her. But, so far as can be seen, she rejects them all, though
with the utmost sweetness