would be too long, madam."

"The longer the more pleasant, senor. How can we spend an hour better
this afternoon, while the gentlemen within are finishing their wine?"

Story-telling, in those old times, when books (and authors also, lucky
for the public) were rarer than now, was a common amusement; and as the
Spaniard's accomplishments in that line were well known, all the ladies
crowded round him; the servants brought chairs and benches; and Don
Guzman, taking his seat in the midst, with a proud humility, at Lady
Grenville's feet, began--

"Your perfections, fair and illustrious ladies, must doubtless have
heard, ere now, how Sebastian Cabota, some forty-five years ago, sailed
forth with a commission from my late master, the Emperor Charles the
Fifth, to discover the golden lands of Tarshish, Ophir, and Cipango; but
being in want of provisions, stopped short at the mouth of that mighty
South American river to which he gave the name of Rio de la Plata, and
sailing up it, discovered the fair land of Paraguay. But you may not
have heard how, on the bank of that river, at the mouth of the Rio
Terceiro, he built a fort which men still call Cabot's Tower; nor have
you, perhaps, heard of the strange tale which will ever make the tower a
sacred spot to all true lovers.

"For when he returned to Spain the year after, he left in his tower a
garrison of a hundred and twenty men, under the command of Nuno de Lara,
Ruiz Moschera, and Sebastian da Hurtado, old friends and fellow-soldiers
of my invincible grandfather Don Ferdinando da Soto; and with them
a jewel, than which Spain never possessed one more precious, Lucia
Miranda, the wife of Hurtado, who, famed in the court of the emperor
no less for her wisdom and modesty than for her unrivalled beauty,
had thrown up all the pomp and ambition of a palace, to marry a poor
adventurer, and to encounter with him the hardships of a voyage round
the world. Mangora, the cacique of the neighboring Timbuez Indians (with
whom Lara had contrived to establish a friendship), cast his eyes on
this fair creature, and no sooner saw than he coveted; no sooner coveted
than he plotted, with the devilish subtilty of a savage, to seize by
force what he knew he could never gain by right. She soon found out his
passion (she was wise enough--what every woman is not--to know when she
is loved), and telling her husband, kept as much as she could out of her
new lover's sight; while the savage pressed Hurta