The room which had been assigned to Florentina at Aldeacorba was the pleasantest in the house. No one had used it since the death of Pablo's mother; but Don Francisco, deeming his niece worthy to be lodged there, had the room neatly arranged and added some little elegancies which had been quite unknown to it in his wife's lifetime. The balcony looked southwards and over the garden, so that the room was always flooded with light and perfume, and cheered by the happy song of birds. Florentina herself, during her few days' stay, had given it the stamp, so to speak, of her own individuality; all sorts of small properties and trifles betrayed the nature of the woman who lived in it, as you may know a bird by its nest. If there are some persons who would make a hell of a palace, so there are others who have only to enter a hovel to make it a Paradise.

It was that very stormy day—I say that day, for I cannot name the date; I only know that it was a day. It had rained all the morning; then the sky had cleared, and at last, high above the misty whiteness of the lower atmosphere, a rainbow threw its glorious arch. One end rested on the oaks of FicÓbriga, close to the sea, and the other on the woods of Saldeoro. Supreme in its simplicity the rainbow can be compared to nothing else, any more than an absolutely ideal and typical form can be. A rainbow is the epitome, the alpha and omega, of visible color.

Florentina was in her room, not threading beads, nor embroidering satin with gold thread, but cutting out garments from patterns made of newspaper. She was squatting on the floor, in the attitudes of a fidgetty child at play; now sitting on her heels, now on all fours, and plying the scissors without a moment's respite. By her side was a heap of pieces of woollen stuff, calico, cotton print, and other materials that she had been, that very morning, to buy at Villamojada, in spite of wind and weather; and snipping here, and cutting there, she was fast evolving sleeves, skirts, and bodies. They were not perhaps models of dressmaking, nor was the exactitude of the patterns to be entirely relied on, for they also were of her own devising; however, she would have been the first to acknowledge their shortcomings, and she hoped that good-will might conduce to a happy result. Her worthy father had said to her, as he saw her sitting to work:

"Bless me, child! one would think there were no dressmakers in the world. You cannot imagine how it annoys me to see a young lady of good position crawling about on the floor with shears in her hands.—It is not at all the right thing. I cannot bear that you should work to clothe yourself even, and am I to submit to see you working for others? What are dressmakers for—heh? What are dressmakers for?"

"A dressmaker would do it much better than I shall," replied Florentina laughing. "But then you see it would not be my doing, Papa; and to do it myself is the very thing I most want."

He left her to her own devices; but not alone, for in the middle of the alcove, between the bed and the wardrobe, stood an old-fashioned sofa and on the sofa lay two blankets, and at one end, on a pile of pillows, lay a weary little head. The face was haggard and colorless—asleep. Sunk rather, in an uneasy lethargy, broken now and again by violent starting and terrors. However, a calmer state had supervened by mid-day, when Florentina's father came into the room again, followed by Golfin. The surgeon went up to the sofa and leaned over Nela, watching her face.

"She seems to be sleeping more quietly now," he said: "We must have no noise."

"What do you think of my daughter?" said Don Manuel, laughing. "Do you see all the trouble she is taking. Now be quite impartial, Don Teodoro: Is there any reason why she should vex me? Honestly, when there is no necessity for taking so much trouble, why should she do so? What pleasure can it be to me to see my daughter wasting all I give her for pin-money; wasting it on others; and besides this mania for low occupations—for low occupations...."

"Let her please herself," replied Golfin, looking down admiringly at the girl. "Every young lady has her own way of wasting her pin-money."

"And I am not to object if her charity brings her to destitution, to bankruptcy!" exclaimed Don Manuel, marching up and down the room in pompous indignation, with his hands in his pockets. "Besides, is there no better method of charity than this? She wished to show her gratitude to God for my nephew's recovery—well and good—very proper, a very Christian feeling. But we shall see, we shall see."

He stopped in front of Nela and looked at her kindly.

"Now, would it not have been better," he said, "if, instead of bringing this poor girl into the house, my daughter had organized one of those grand charitable affairs, which are the fashion even at court, and which give all the best people in society an opportunity of displaying their good feeling? Why did you not think of holding a lottery? We could easily have sold any number of tickets among our friends, and have collected a handsome sum of money to give away to charitable asylums. Why, you might have got up an association among the gentry of Villamojada and the neighborhood, or have invited all our acquaintance at Santa Irene de CampÓ to join you, and have held meetings and collected a great deal of money.—Nay, why not have got up a bull-fight? I would have undertaken to provide the beasts and the men.—Or amateur theatricals?—Last night DoÑa SofÍa and I were talking of that very thing. Learn from her, my dear, learn from her. The poor owe more to her than I can tell you. There are all the families who live by the employment they get in working the lotteries—there are all the professionals and subordinates who make money by the theatrical performances! Oh! my dear, the paupers in the workhouse are not the only poor! SofÍa told me that they made a little fortune out of the masked balls they gave this winter. A good deal of it was spent, of course, in gas, in renting the theatre, in service, and so forth—still there was a morsel of bread left for the poor after all.—But, if you do not believe me, read the statistics, child—read the statistics."

Florentina laughed, and found no better answer than to repeat the surgeon's apology for her:

"Every young lady has her own way of wasting her pin-money."

"But Don Teodoro," remonstrated Don Manuel, in great disgust: "You must admit that no one else does it as my daughter does."

"I quite admit it," said Golfin with meaning, and looking at the girl: "No one is like Florentina."

"And yet—with all her faults," said the father, drawing her to him: "With all her faults, I love her better than my life. This little hussy is worth her weight in gold.—Come, tell me, which do you like best, Aldeacorba de Suso, or Santa Irene de CampÓ?"

"I do not dislike Aldeacorba."

"Ah! little puss. I see which way the wind blows. Do you know that at this very moment my brother is talking seriously to his son? Family affairs! Well, and something very good is to come of it all—look, Don Teodoro, at my daughter's face; it is as red as roses in May. Now, I am off to hear what my brother has to say—what my brother has to say." And the worthy man departed.

Golfin went back to Nela.

"Did she sleep last night?" he asked.

"Very little. I heard her sobbing and crying all night. But to-night she shall have a good bed, for which I have sent to Villamojada, and I will put her in the little room next to mine."

"Poor little Nela!" said the doctor. "You cannot imagine what an interest I feel in this hapless creature. Some people would laugh at it, but we, at any rate, are not made of stone. What little we have done to improve the condition of this poor child, ought to be done for a large proportion of the human race. There are many thousands of beings in the world in the same plight as Nela. Who knows them? where are they? They are lost in the desert of society—for society has its deserts—in the dark places of life, in the solitudes of field labor, in mines, in factories. We pass them without even seeing them—we give them alms, perhaps, but without knowing them.—How are we to be cognizant of so base a class of humanity! At first Nela attracted me because I thought that hers was an exceptional nature; but, as I have thought more, I have felt that hers is after all only one of the commonest cases. It is an instance of the condition to which a highly-organized moral nature must be reduced, a nature apt for good, apt for learning, apt for virtue, but which can never develop its powers in the neglect and isolation to which it is condemned. They live blind in spirit, just as Pablo PenÁguilas lived blind in body, though he possessed the latent faculty of sight."

Florentina was listening with eager sympathy and intelligence to the surgeon's speech.

"Look at her," he went on: "There she lies; she has a beautiful fancy, acute feelings, and can love with devotion and tenderness. She is gifted with a remarkable aptitude for every grace of mind, while, at the same time, she is full of the grossest superstitions; her religious ideas are vague, monstrous, and heterodox, and her moral sense needs guidance as much as her natural intelligence. She has had no education but what she has been able to give herself; like a tree that gets no nourishment but that of its own withered and fallen leaves, she owes absolutely nothing to any one else. In all her life she has never been taught a single lesson, never heard a word of loving counsel, nor a precept of pious dogma; she is guided entirely by ill-understood examples which she adapts to her own instincts and desires. Her criticisms are all her own, and as she is full of imagination and feeling, and the strongest native impulse of her soul is to worship something, she has worshipped Nature, after the fashion of primitive races. All her ideals are naturalistic—and if you do not quite understand what I mean, dear Florentina, I must explain myself more exactly another time.

"She has a really artistic passion for form and beauty. Her whole nature and her affections all centre round this idea. The gifts and graces of the mind are to her an unknown realm of beauty, a hardly-discovered land, of which she knows only so much as some traveller might of a new country on whose shores he had been shipwrecked. The great news of the gospel—the greatest achievement of the spirit of humanity—has hardly even sounded in her ears; she has the same faint suspicion of it that Asiatic nations may have of European culture—and if you do not quite understand me, dear Florentina, I must explain myself more exactly another time.

"But she is very capable of making rapid progress in a short time, and of rising to a higher level, nay to our own. Show her a little light and she will fly across the centuries—she has wandered from the track, and cannot see far, but give her light and she will find her way again. No one yet has ever put the torch in her hand, for Pablo PenÁguilas, in his own ignorance of all external truth, contributed largely but unconsciously to increase her errors. Such a fantastic and extravagant idealist was not the best master for a nature like hers. We must set truth before the poor child, who is like a being raised from the dead of a remote past; we will teach her to know the graces of the mind; we will bring her down to our own century; we will give her soul a strength which as yet it has not, and put a noble Christian conscience in the place of her savage naturalism and wild superstitions. We have an admirable field to work in, a virgin soil on which to sow the seed of centuries of growth. We may make time fly fast over her head, showing her the truth it has revealed, and so create a new being—for indeed, dear Florentina, it is the same thing as creating a new being—and if you do not quite understand me, I must explain myself more exactly another time."

Florentina, though she made no pretensions to learning, thought that she did understand what Golfin had meant by his quaint and original harangue. She herself was about to add some remarks on the subject; but at that moment Nela woke. Her eyes timidly wandered round the room, and then rested alternately on the two faces that looked down at her.

"You are not frightened?" said Florentina gently.

"Frightened—no SeÑora; you are very kind—and the SeÑor too."

"Are you not glad to be here? what are you afraid of?"

Golfin took her hand. "Speak frankly and truly," he said: "Which of us do you like best—Florentina or me?"

Nela made no reply, and the others smiled; but the child remained moodily grave.

"Now, listen to me, you silly little thing," the surgeon went on: "You have to make up your mind to live with one of us. Florentina will stay here; I shall go away. Decide for one or the other—which do you like best."

Marianela looked from one to the other without finding any definite answer; finally her eyes rested on those of Golfin.

"I believe I am the man of her choice.—But that is not fair to Florentina, Nela; she will be vexed."

The poor child smiled and, putting out a feeble hand to Florentina, she murmured:

"I do not want to vex her."

But even while she spoke she turned ashy pale; she strained her neck, her eyes seemed starting out of her head—she was listening to a sound that was full of terrors to her. She had heard footsteps.

"He is coming!" exclaimed Golfin, sympathizing in his patient's alarm.

"Yes, here he comes!" cried Florentina, and she flew to the door.

It was he. Pablo had opened the door and walked softly into the room—straight in, from the habit he had acquired during years of blindness. He came in smiling, and his eyes, freed from the bandage, which he had himself removed, looked straight before him. They were as yet unaccustomed to the muscular action which makes them turn, and were hardly aware of objects lying out of the direct line of vision. It was literally true of him—as it is of many who never were blind in their lives—that he only saw what was directly under his eyes.

"Cousin!" said he going towards her: "Why have you not been to see me to-day? I have had to come to look for you. Your father told me you were doing some work for the poor—so I suppose I must forgive you."

Florentina did not know what to say; she was annoyed. Pablo had not observed either Golfin or Nela, and Florentina, intending to keep him from approaching the sofa, went towards the window; then, picking up some pieces of stuff, she sat down as if she were going to sew. The full light of the sun fell upon her, shedding a vivid glow on all her left side and giving the most charming relief to her pretty head with its russet brown hair. Her beauty seemed radiant; like the very personification and incarnation of light. Her hair was somewhat in disorder, and her thin morning dress followed the graceful lines of her slender figure, while her simple and dignified pose was worthy of the noblest ideals of art.

"Cousin," she said with a slight frown on her pretty brow, "Don Teodoro has not yet given you leave to-day to take your bandage off. That is not right."

"He will give me leave presently," said the young man laughing. "And it cannot hurt me; I am really quite well. And if it did do me harm, I should not care.—No, I should not care if I became blind again, after having seen you."

"And what good would that be to you?" said Florentina reprovingly.

"I was alone in my room, my father is gone out—after speaking to me about you. You know what he said."

"No, I know nothing about it," said the girl, with her eyes fixed on her work.

"But I know.—My father is very kind and reasonable, and we are very fond of each other.... Well, when my father had left me, I took off the bandage and looked out at the fields; I saw the rainbow and I felt quite overcome with admiration, and with religious feeling too, Florentina—I do not know why that grand spectacle, which I had never seen before, should have given me so intense a feeling of the harmony of creation. I do not know why, looking at the perfect blending of its colors, I could not help thinking of you. I do not know why, as I saw the rainbow, I said to myself: 'I have felt this all before.' I felt again exactly as I felt when I first saw you, Florentina, my darling. My heart seemed ready to burst my bosom, and I could not help crying. I cried a great deal and my tears blinded me again for a few minutes—I called you and you did not answer—when I could see again, the rainbow had vanished. I went to look for you, I thought you were in the garden—I went down stairs, up stairs, and here I am. And now, here, I find you so lovely that I feel as if I had never seen you rightly till to-day—never till to-day, because now I have had time to learn to compare you with others. I have seen several women, and they are all horrible by your side. I find it hard to believe that you have lived through the years of my blindness.—Nay, nay. What I believe is that you came into being at the moment when light dawned upon my comprehension; that my own mind created you at the moment when I first was lord of the visible world. They had often told me that there was not a living creature to compare with you, and I would not believe it—but I believe it now, as surely as I believe in the light of heaven!"

And as he spoke he fell on one knee.

Florentina, startled and abashed, looked up from her sewing.

"Cousin—for pity's sake!" she murmured.

"Cousin for pity's sake!" exclaimed Pablo, with frank enthusiasm. "Why, why, are you so lovely? My father is most reasonable; I can say nothing against his arguments or his kindness.—Florentina, do you know I thought I could never love you; I thought I could love some one—not you. But what can I do? Thank God my love and my reason are one! My father, to whom I confessed my mistake; told me that I had loved a hideous monster. But now I can say that I worship an angel. The ignorant blind man can see, and at last pay due homage to real beauty. And yet I cannot help trembling—do you not see me tremble?—Seeing you I have but one desire, and that is, to take you in my arms and clasp you to my heart, enfolding you, holding you tightly—very tightly."

And Pablo, who was now kneeling on both knees, clasped his arms across his breast.

"Oh! I do not know what I feel!" he went on, stammering, and turning pale with agitation. "Every day I discover some new world, Florentina. First I discovered the world of light, to-day I have discovered another. Is it possible that you, so lovely—so divine—are to be mine, the wife of my heart?"

He seemed about to fall to the ground in a fainting-fit, and Florentina leaned forward to support him. Pablo took her hand, then lifting her wide loose sleeve, he kissed her wrist and arm with eager passion, counting the kisses.

"One—two—three—four—ah! I am dying!"

"Be quiet, stop," cried Florentina, standing up, and making her cousin rise too. "Doctor Golfin will you scold him."

"Your bandage on, at once!" cried Teodoro: "Go to your room and keep quiet."

The young man, in the utmost confusion turned to that side of the room and brought his eyes to bear on the surgeon, standing by the sofa that was covered with blankets.

"Are you here, Don Teodoro?" he said going up to him.

"Yes, I am here," said Golfin very gravely. "You ought to go back to your room and put the bandage on again. I will go with you."

"I am perfectly well—but, of course, I will obey—only, first let me see what is here."

He was looking at the blankets and, between them, at a ghastly head, anything but fair to look upon. In fact Nela's nose seemed to have become sharper, her eyes smaller, her mouth less well-formed, her face more freckled, her hair thinner, and her forehead lower. Her eyes were closed, she breathed with difficulty, her livid lips were parted, and the hapless child seemed to be at her last gasp, with the look of death on her face already.

"Ah!" exclaimed Pablo: "My father told me that Florentina had given shelter to some poor creature. How good of her! You—poor child, you may be thankful, for you have fallen into the hands of an angel!—Are you ill? In my house you shall want for nothing; my cousin is the very image of God on earth.—This poor child is very ill; is she not doctor?"

"Yes ..." said Golfin, "she must be left alone and hear no more talking."

"Then I am gone."

Pablo put out his hand and laid it on the head which seemed to his unaccustomed eyes the most terrible symbol of all human misery and wretchedness. Nela raised her eyes and fixed them on her master. Pablo felt as if they gazed at him from the depths of a tomb, so profound was their expression of sorrow and despair; then Nela freed one hand from beneath the coverings—a feeble, burning, rough little hand—and took that of the young man. At her touch Pablo shuddered from head to foot, and uttered a cry that came from his very soul.

There was a terrible pause—one of those lulls which precede the catastrophes of life as they do the convulsions of nature, as though to add to their solemnity.

Then, in a quavering voice that thrilled the by-standers with its tragical sadness, Nela spoke:

"Yes, SeÑorito mio," she said, "I am Nela."

Slowly, and as if she were lifting some too heavy weight, she raised her master's hand to her dry lips and kissed it—kissed it again—and then, with a third attempt, her lips remained motionless on the lad's hand.

They were all silent—looking at her. The first to break the silence was Pablo.

"Is this you ..." he said, "you...." And the thoughts that crowded on his mind checked his utterance of any. He would have liked to discover some new language in which to utter them, just as he had already discovered the two new worlds—of light, and of the love of external beauty. He could do nothing but look at her—look at Nela and remember that darkened world in which he had lived, his passions and the dreams and errors of his blindness all wandering and lost in its obscurity. Florentina, wiping away her tears, leaned over Nela to look into her face, and Golfin, watching her and knowing too well what he saw, exclaimed in a voice like a knell:

"It has killed her. The sight of you has killed her!"—then turning to Pablo he said sternly: "Go, at once, to your room."

"Dying! dying so, without any cause!" cried Florentina in despair, and laying her hand lightly on Nela's brow.

"MarÍa!" she said, "Marianela!"

She called her by her name again and again, leaning over her and looking at her, as we might look over the margin of a well at some one who has fallen into it and who is drowning in the depth and blackness of its waters.

"She does not answer!" said Pablo, horror-stricken.

Golfin, watching her ebbing vitality, perceived that her pulse still throbbed under his touch. Pablo bent over her, and putting his lips close to her ear, he called her once more:

"Nela, Nela my friend—my dear!"

She turned a little, opened her eyes, and moved her hands. She looked as if her spirit had returned from some far away flight. Seeing Pablo's gaze fixed upon her with anxious curiosity, she turned aside abashed and alarmed, and tried to hide her face as if she were a guilty thing.

"What is the matter with her?" asked Florentina vehemently. "Don Teodoro, save her if you are a man.—If you do not save her you are a charlatan!..."

The young girl's charitable instincts were spurring her to positive rage.

"Nela!" repeated the lad in the deepest distress, and not yet recovered from the shock which the sight of his little comrade had given him: "You seem to be afraid of me—what have I done to you?"

The dying girl put out her hand to clasp Florentina's, and pressed it to her breast, and then she did the same with Pablo's; afterwards she once more pressed them both with all the strength she could command. Her sunken eyes looked from one to the other, but her gaze was vague and remote; it seemed to come from some inner depth of darkness and despair, as though she were indeed the drowning wretch in the well, sinking lower every instant. Suddenly her breathing became difficult; she sighed, and clutched the two hands she held with convulsive energy.

Teodoro had turned the house upside down; had sent for medicines and powerful stimulants, and was doing all in his power to arrest the swift extinction of this young life.

"It is hard," he said, "to stop a drop of water that is trickling, falling away—down, down, and within an inch or two of the great Sea.—But I will try."

He sent away every one but Florentina, whom he kept in the room. But the stimulants and irritants with which he endeavored to bring back ebbing life to the frail body, only served to restore some little muscular action, and in spite of this she was sinking every minute.

"It is cruelty!" cried Golfin desperately, as he snatched away the mustard and the irritants. "We are tormentors and torturers. It is like setting dogs on a dying man that the pain may keep him alive to suffer. Away with it all!"

"And is there nothing to be done?"

"Nothing—but what God will do."

"But what is the matter with her?"

"Death!" he shouted with a delirious rage of grief, ill-befitting a medical man.

"But what illness is it that has brought her to death?"

"Death!" he repeated.

"You do not understand me; I want to know of what...?"

"Of death.—How can I tell you whether it is shame, or jealousy, or wounded pride, or grief, or disappointed love, that has killed her? A strange catalogue of symptoms! No, no—we know nothing—nothing but useless details."

"What! Doctors!"

"I tell you we know nothing—a little on the surface that is all."

"And this, what is this?"

"A sudden attack of inflammation—meningitis perhaps."

"And what is that?"

"A name.... Death!"

"But is it possible that any one should die—like this—without any known cause, without any sort of disease? Oh! Don Teodoro, what is the matter with her?"

"How should I know?"

"But you are a doctor?"

"Of eyes—not of passions."

"Passions!" exclaimed Florentina, looking down at the senseless girl. "You—poor child—what passions are you dying of?"

"Ask your future husband."

Florentina stood lost in utter amazement.

"Poor thing!" she cried with a choked sob. "Can mere grief kill in this way?"

"When I picked her up at la Trascava she was in a high fever."

"But that is not enough; no, not enough to kill her!"

"You say it is not enough. God and Nature say that it is."

"It is as if she had been stabbed."

"Remember what those eyes—now closing forever—saw a short while since. Remember that a blind man loved her and that he is blind no longer; that he has seen her—seen her! The shock was a death-blow...."

"Oh what a terrible mysterious...."

"No, it is no mystery," cried the surgeon, almost wildly. "It is the awful collapse of an illusion; the rude blow of reality; the miserable destroyer which has come between two noble souls. And I—I brought that reality home to them!"

"Oh it is a wretched mystery!" repeated Florentina, not understanding the current of his thoughts.

"A mystery? No," repeated Teodoro with increasing agitation: "It is bare reality; the sudden swallowing up of a whole world of illusions. Reality to him meant a new life—to her, anguish, suffocation, humiliation, sorrow, contempt, an empty life, jealousy,—Death!"

"And all for...."

"And all for one pair of eyes opened to see light—and reality. Reality! I cannot get the word out of my brain. It seems to be written there in letters of fire."

"All for one pair of eyes.—And grief can kill so quickly—without giving us time to try a remedy?"

"I do not know," said Golfin, bewildered, confounded, helpless, in view of the mystic characters of the Book of Life and Death, which science may pore over but may not decipher its dark riddle.

"You do not know!" cried Florentina desperately. "Then why are you a doctor?"

"I do not know, I do not know!" he reiterated, striking his dishevelled head with his heavy hands.—"Yes, one thing I know, and that is that we know nothing but the skin-deep phenomena of life. I—I am a mender of eyes and nothing more."

He fixed his gaze with absorbed attention on the little figure which was hovering on the border-land between a living woman and a corpse. "Soul!" he exclaimed in a tone of bitter questioning: "What is passing in you now?"

Florentina burst into tears.

"The soul!" she murmured, and her head drooped on her breast: "It is fled!"

"No ..." said Teodoro, taking Nela's hand. "There is still some life left—but so little, that it would seem as if the soul were indeed far away and had left only the breath behind."

"Lord have mercy!" exclaimed the young girl and began to pray.

"Alas! hapless spirit!" murmured the surgeon. "You were but ill-lodged indeed...."

They both bent over her, watching her closely.

"Her lips are moving," cried Florentina. "She is speaking."

Yes, her lips parted; she said something—a word, two, three.

"What is she saying?" each asked the other; but neither of them could understand her.

She spoke perhaps in the tongue that is known to those who live the life eternal.

This was the end; her lips moved no more; they remained half-open showing a row of little white teeth. Teodoro bent over her and, kissing Nela's forehead, he said in a steady voice:

"Woman, you did well to quit this world." But Florentina's voice was choked with tears and sobs as she said: "I wanted to make her happy, and she would not be."