ned.
But they were silent: of what good were reproaches now; why look for
consolations? The deeper they were, the more they enlarged the wound.

One evening, Juana, stupid with grief, heard through the open door of
her little room, which the old couple had thought shut, a pitying moan
from her adopted mother.

"The child will die of grief."

"Yes," said Perez, in a shaking voice, "but what can we do? I cannot now
boast of her beauty and her chastity to Comte d'Arcos, to whom I hoped
to marry her."

"But a single fault is not vice," said the old woman, pitying as the
angels.

"Her mother gave her to this man," said Perez.

"Yes, in a moment; without consulting the poor child!" cried Dona
Lagounia.

"She knew what she was doing."

"But oh! into what hands our pearl is going!"

"Say no more, or I shall seek a quarrel with that Diard."

"And that would only lead to other miseries."

Hearing these dreadful words Juana saw the happy future she had lost by
her own wrongdoing. The pure and simple years of her quiet life would
have been rewarded by a brilliant existence such as she had fondly
dreamed,--dreams which had caused her ruin. To fall from the height of
Greatness to Monsieur Diard! She wept. At times she went nearly mad.
She floated for a while between vice and religion. Vice was a speedy
solution, religion a lifetime of suffering. The meditation was stormy
and solemn. The next day was the fatal day, the day for the marriage.
But Juana could still remain free. Free, she knew how far her misery
would go; married, she was ignorant of where it went or what it might
bring her.

Religion triumphed. Dona Lagounia stayed beside her child and prayed and
watched as she would have prayed and watched beside the dying.

"God wills it," she said to Juana.

Nature gives to woman alternately a strength which enables her to suffer
and a weakness which leads her to resignation. Juana resigned herself;
and without restriction. She determined to obey her mother's prayer,
and cross the desert of life to reach God's heaven, knowing well that no
flowers grew for her along the way of that painful journey.

She married Diard. As for the quartermaster, though he had no grace in
Juana's eyes, we may well absolve him. He loved her distractedly. The
Marana, so keen to know the signs of love, had recognized in that man
the accents of passion and the brusque nature, the generous impulses,
that are common to Southerners. In the pa