adrid might love to lie and gaze at. She was a figure to look upon
in silence. The dancing frenzy must have seized upon her while she
was dressing; for she was in her bodice, bare-armed, her hair floating
unbound far below the waist of her barred or banded skirt. She had
caught up her castanets, and rattled them as she danced with a kind of
passionate fierceness, her lithe body undulating with flexuous grace,
her diamond eyes glittering, her round arms wreathing and unwinding,
alive and vibrant to the tips of the slender fingers. Some passion
seemed to exhaust itself in this dancing paroxysm; for all at once she
reeled from the middle of the floor, and flung herself, as it were in
a careless coil, upon a great tiger's-skin which was spread out in one
corner of the apartment.

The old Doctor stood motionless, looking at her as she lay panting on
the tawny, black-lined robe of the dead monster which stretched out
beneath her, its rude flattened outline recalling the Terror of the
Jungle as he crouched for his fatal spring. In a few moments her head
drooped upon her arm, and her glittering eyes closed,--she was sleeping.
He stood looking at her still, steadily, thoughtfully, tenderly.
Presently he lifted his hand to his forehead, as if recalling some
fading remembrance of other years.

"Poor Catalina!"

This was all he said. He shook his head,--implying that his visit would
be in vain to-day,--returned to his sulky, and rode away, as if in a
dream.

CHAPTER XI. COUSIN RICHARD'S VISIT.

The Doctor was roused from his revery by the clatter of approaching
hoofs. He looked forward and saw a young fellow galloping rapidly
towards him.

A common New-England rider with his toes turned out, his elbows jerking
and the daylight showing under him at every step, bestriding a cantering
beast of the plebeian breed, thick at every point where he should be
thin, and thin at every point where he should be thick, is not one of
those noble objects that bewitch the world. The best horsemen outside of
the cities are the unshod countryboys, who ride "bareback," with only a
halter round the horse's neck, digging their brown heels into his ribs,
and slanting over backwards, but sticking on like leeches, and taking
the hardest trot as if they loved it.--This was a different sight
on which the Doctor was looking. The streaming mane and tail of the
unshorn, savage-looking, black horse, the dashing grace with which the
young fellow in t