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The woman stared at her in amaze,—the time had flown! Yes, there was the evidence,—a second infant in the lap of Doña Feliz, puny, wizened. She dressed it quickly, asking no assistance, ordering the woman sharply to the side of Doña Rita.

“A thousand pities,” said Don Rafael as he looked at it, “that it is not a boy!” Then as the thought struck him, he laughed softly: “Ay, perhaps it is for luck,—instead of the three kings, who always bring death, we have the three Marias.”

Doña Rita had heard something of the foundling, and smiled faintly. “Thank God they were not all born of one mother,” she said. “Ay! give me my first-born here;” and with the tiny creature resting upon her arm, and the second presently lying near, Doña Rita sank to sleep.

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Though the three Marias, as Don Rafael had called them, thus entered upon life, or at least into that of the hacienda of Tres Hermanos, almost simultaneously, except at their baptism they found nothing in common. On that occasion, a few days later than that of which we have written, the aged priest, in the name of the Trinity, severally blessed Fiorentina, Rosario, and Dolores,—each name as was customary being joined to that of the virgin Queen of Heaven; but as they left the church their paths separated as widely as their stations differed. Dolores, for whom in vain—were it designed to subdue or chasten her—was chosen so sad a name, was taken to the dusky little hut, a few rods from the gate, that was, when he chose to claim it, Pedro’s home, and there cared for by his niece Florencia with an uncertain and somewhat fractious tenderness, and nourished at the breast of whomsoever happened to be at hand. She passed through babyhood, losing her prettiness with the golden tinge of her hair, and as she grew older looking with wide-opened eyes out from a tangle of dark elf-locks, which explained the survival of her baby pet-name Chinita, or “little curly one.”