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determined that Eliza would have a better fate than her own; she would school the child in the arts of dissembling, manipulation, and cunning, which, she had no doubt, were more useful than candor. She spent three hours in the morning with Eliza and another three in the afternoon, studying schoolbooks imported from England. She entrusted the French lessons to a professor because no well-educated girl could be ignorant of that language. The rest of the time she personally supervised every stitch Eliza made for her trousseau: sheets, towels, table linens, and profusely embroidered undergarments, which Rose then wrapped in linen, perfumed with lavender, and stored in trunks. Every three months she took everything from the trunks and laid them in the sun to prevent the ravages of humidity and moths during the years leading up to a marriage. She bought a coffer for the jewels of Eliza’s dowry and charged her brother John with filling it with gifts from his travels. Sapphires from India were added to emeralds and amethysts from Brazil, necklaces and bracelets of Venetian gold, and even a small diamond brooch. Jeremy Sommers knew nothing of these details, and was completely innocent of how his brother and sister financed such extravagances.
    The piano lessons—now with a professor newly arrived from Belgium who used a ferule to rap the clumsy fingers of his students—became a daily martyrdom for Eliza. She also attended an academy of ballroom dancing, and at the master’s suggestion Miss Rose obliged her to walk for hours balancing a book on her head, the purpose of which was to teach her to stand up straight. Eliza did all her assignments, practiced her piano lessons, and walked straight as a candle, even without a book on her head, but at night she slipped barefoot down to the servants’ patio and often the dawn found her sleeping on a pallet with her arms around Mama Fresia.
    Two years after the floods, things took a turn for the better and the country basked in good weather, political tranquility, and an economic boom. Chileans treaded warily; they were accustomed to natural disasters and such a bonanza could be the preparation for a major cataclysm. To top it off, rich veins of silver and gold were discovered in the north. During the Conquest, when the Spaniards wandered America seeking those ores and bearing off everything they found, Chile had been considered the backside of the world because, compared with the riches of the rest of the continent, it had very little to offer. The forced march across its towering mountains and the lunar desert of the north dried up the greed in the hearts of those conquistadors, and if any remained, unconquerable Indians made them rue it. The captains, exhausted and impoverished, cursed the land that gave them no choice but to plant their flags and lie down to die because to return without glory was worse. Three hundred years later those mines, hidden from the eyes of the ambitious soldiers of Spain and now suddenly, magically, exposed, were an unexpected prize for their descendants. New fortunes were formed, augmented by others from industry and commerce. The ancient landed aristocracy, which had always had the upper hand in the country, felt its privileges threatened, and new wealth became a social stigma.
    One of those filthy-rich upstarts fell in love with Paulina del Valle. His name was Feliciano Rodríguez de Santa Cruz, and in a few years’ time he had made a fortune in a gold mine he had developed with his brother. Little was known of their origins, except that it was suspected that their ancestors were converted Jews and had adopted that sonorous Christian family name to save their skins during the Inquisition, more than enough reason to be flatly rejected by the proud del Valles. Of Agustín’s five daughters, Jacob Todd liked Paulina best because her dashing, happy nature reminded him of Miss Rose. The girl had an open way of laughing that contrasted