nto quiet.

But the next day Melissa Whiting blazed forth anew. "I detest every
vestige of those old ideas of theirs; I hate the pride and shiftlessness
of all this land. I am attached to our friends here, of course; they
have always been kind to me. But--it is written! They will go down,
down, they and all who are like unto them; already they belong to the
Past. Their country here will be opened up, improved; but not by them.
It will be made modern, made rich under their very eyes; but not by
them. It will be filled with new people, new life; but they will get no
benefit from it, their faces will always be turned the other way. They
will dwindle in numbers, but they will not change; generations must
pass before the old leaven will be worn out. _Could_ I leave Garda to
that? Could I die, knowing that she would live over there on Patricio,
on that forlorn Ruiz plantation, or down the river in that tumble-down
house of the Girons--that Manuel with his insufferable airs, or that
wooden Torres with his ridiculous pride, would be all she should ever
know of life and happiness--my beautiful, beautiful child? I could not,
Margaret; I could not." Her eyes were wet.

"But she is not to be left to them," said Margaret.

"No; you have saved me from that," responded the mother, gratefully. She
put out her hand and took Margaret's for a moment; then relinquished it.
The brief clasp would have seemed cold to their southern friends; but it
expressed all that was necessary between these two northerners.

Another day the sick woman resumed her retrospect, she spoke of her
early life. "I was a poor school-teacher, you know; I had no near
relatives, no home, I was considered to have made a wonderful match when
I married as I did. Everybody was astonished at my good luck--perfectly
astonished; they couldn't comprehend how it had happened. When they
knew, in New Bristol, that I was to marry Mr. Edgar Thorne, of Florida;
that I was to be taken down to an old Spanish plantation which had been
in his family for generations; that I was to live there in luxury, and
'a tropical climate'--they all came to see me again, to look at me; they
seemed to think that I must have changed in some way, that I couldn't be
the same Melissa Whiting who had taught their district school. At New
Bristol the snow in the winter is four feet deep. At New Bristol
everybody is busy, and everybody is poor. But I was to live among
palm-trees in a place called Gracias-