revenue would result. Unfortunately, the orange ranch of the Doña Maria Del Valle was a poor one. It was planted with a flavorless variety of seedling, which yielded an income quite insufficient for the demands of the family. From an æsthetic point of view the grove appeared the Garden of the Hesperides. The staunch, far-reaching limbs of the old trees drooped opulently beneath the golden balls that invited the "Forty Thieves," who, happening to be "tenderfeet," ate with wry faces and discourteous exclamations the fruit that a native would have scorned to touch. For in California oranges are not ripe in December. Not until the late spring, when the sun has used persistently his winsome inducements, does the fruit consent to assume its luscious perfection.

Turning from the highway, the ranch of the Doña Maria Del Valle was entered from between two mammoth century plants, whose giant spears made formidable the approach to the long avenue leading to the house. The drive was shaded by gnarled old pepper trees, uniting from each side their fantastic branches to form an elfin tunnel of lacy shade. On the ground, thickly scattered, lay dartlike leaves, and scarlet berries shading from rich to pale, until a long oriental rug seemed spread for the court of an expected princess.

At the end of the Avenue stood the low adobe, covered with ivy and the famous Gold of Ophir rose, which at Easter illuminated the veranda and roof with the lights and shadows of forty thousand blooms. Not far from the house two giant palms—honored patriarchs of the valley—reared their trembling feathers to the sky. Like grim sentinels, true to a trust, they guarded in dumb eloquence the story of the past.

Before reaching the house the drive divided, encircling within the arms of its curve a soft oval cushion of Bermuda grass that in December is brown and unpromising, but in the spring grows green remaining so through the long summer, making no imperative demand for water, and being at all seasons as soft to the feet as the most luxurious rug. It is the grass created for the invalid. He alone appreciates the thick, delicious mat, which hoards for his bloodless feet thousands of warm sunbeams that cheat his physician into the belief that he is eminent, when he discovers his patient escaping his professional clutches.

Added to the tropical effect of full-grown palms and riotous shrubbery, the guardian Sierra Madre was ever flashing rich shadows and tender patches of light, that, in the clear, prismatic air, reflected countless expressions into the hearts of the flowers and onto the surface of the leaves.

Such was the home of the Doña Maria Del Valle. Here Mariposilla had been born, sixteen years before, five months after the death of her father, Don Arturo.

CHAPTER V.

Each year, when the Gold of Ophir illuminates the valley with its passionate bloom, I think of Mariposilla. Under the spell of the transient radiance of the rose, her beauty comes to me like a lovely dream. The flashing lights and subtile shades of the marvelous flower seem to communicate a wild sensation of the child's presence; for ever since I first beheld her close to the rose, there has been in my mind a fancy that between these two children of the valley there existed a bond, an almost supernatural kinship, that betrayed itself with each quiver of the atmosphere.

So impressed I became with the idea, that I unconsciously sought for Mariposilla's mood in the changing color of the rose. During the eventful weeks of which I shall write, when the rose and the girl began and finished their one exciting drama, bursting together into fullest perfection, I found myself associating them constantly in my thoughts. So essential each appeared to the other, that when Mariposilla stood beneath the Gold of Ophir she seemed to absorb its every tint, while at the same time its golden sprays glowed with the effulgence of her glorious proximity. Their harmony appeared perfect, their united beauty the personification of carnal and ethereal blending. When the sun shone early, with no rebuff from the occasional fog, thousands of buds and blossoms bloomed upon the somber adobe, and even while one looked, indescribable tones of gold, and pink, and yellow appeared to creep from the passionate hearts of the buds onto the glorified edges of the full-blown flowers. Then, too, Mariposilla dazzled. Her very being flashed with a phosphorescence akin to nothing human, but so like the luster of the rose that each must have been created that the other might bloom. Both seemed children of the sun, entrusted with opalescent secrets that nothing but his rays could reveal; for, if the day grew chill, both Mariposilla and the Gold of Ophir paled. The fire left the edges of the rose petals, and the blood retreated from the surface of the girl's creamy flesh. Her great luminous eyes grew dull, as she sought listlessly her neglected lace frame, drawing silently the threads of the linen, ignoring the whining questions of her old grandmother, completely lost in the indifference of her mood.

Or perhaps, disregarding the commands of her mother, she tossed aside the lace frame and crept into a silent corner of the room to play upon her guitar wild, turbulent music, until the Doña Maria, angry and impatient, commanded her to finish at once the altar cloth ordered months before by the lady from Pasadena. At the same time she bade her mind with care to cross herself at the little Jesus stitch, else a curse would come upon them all.

Even yet I dread to think of this strange child out of the sunshine. I would always have kept her under the influence of soothing warmth. Mariposilla—little butterfly—how well she idealized her name. Born of the sun and for the sun, no real butterfly ever rivaled her. Why could I not protect her passionate, capricious young heart, as the flowers enfold at night the dazzling, thoughtless beauties of a summer's day? Alas! destiny seemed kinder to the insect than to the child.

Viewing in retrospect the girl's rapid and eventful development, I now remember vividly each incident in her little history. When she came into my life like a picturesque plaything, I failed to realize that she was other than a beautiful child. I was then totally ignorant from experience of the premature blooming of Spanish girls. From history I knew that they developed young; but history is easily forgotten. It was natural to expect Mariposilla to pursue the same pace that once upon a time I had taken myself. We are all miserable egotists, without realizing the weakness; and I fell at once into the fallacy of believing that all girls develop in the same way. Mariposilla was only sixteen, and at sixteen most girls are children. I recalled my own blushes, as I remembered drawing-room miseries to which I was at that age subjected. When my grown brothers insisted upon presenting me to college chums, I flew at my earliest opportunity from the ordeal, cheered by the thought of a toboggan slide with my nice boy beau. Yes, I had a boy beau, who was truly delightful. It was only when he went away to college that I ceased to care for him, and bestowed my smiles upon a new flame across the way, who was yet a boy. At sixteen I regarded men as formidable creatures, to be encountered when school days were over, and childhood had come to an end. When I heard later that my gay Freshman smoked! and was engaged to a young woman of his college town, six years his senior, I wondered how I had ever consented to sit upon a sled with such a monster. At sixteen my ideas of love were as vague as they were wholesome. In