found ourselves. To my great surprise, and, I may add,
disappointment, however, she did not exhibit very much sympathy in poor
Daphne's tragic fate; on the contrary, she appeared to me to listen with
a feeling closely akin to impatience to all that part of the story with
which the negro girl was connected; and Smellie's frequent mention of
the poor unfortunate creature actually elicited once or twice a slight
but quite unmistakable shrug of the lovely shoulders and a decidedly
contemptuous flash from the glorious eyes of his fair auditor.

I may as well at once confess frankly that, with the usual
susceptibility of callow youth, I promptly became captivated by the
charms of our lovely hostess; and I may as well complete my confession
by stating that, with the equally usual overweening conceit of callow
youth, I quite expected to find my clumsy and ill-timed efforts to
render myself agreeable to my charmer speedily successful. In this
expectation, however, I was doomed to be grievously disappointed; for I
soon discovered that, whilst Dona Antonia was good-natured enough to
receive my awkward attentions with unvarying patience and politeness, it
was _Smellie's_ footstep and the sound of _his_ voice which caused her
eyes to sparkle, her cheek to flush, and her bosom to heave
tumultuously. So, in extreme disgust at the lady's deplorable lack of
taste and discernment, I was fain to abandon my efforts to fascinate
her, attaching myself to her father instead and accompanying him, gun in
hand, on his frequent rambles through the forest in search of
"specimens."

Returning to the house one evening rather late, we found a stranger
awaiting Don Manuel's arrival. That is to say, he was a stranger to
Smellie and myself, but he was evidently a tolerably intimate
acquaintance of our host and hostess. He was a tall, dark, handsome,
well-built man, evidently a Spaniard, with black restless gleaming eyes,
a well-knit figure, and a manner so very free-and-easy as to be almost
offensive. His attire consisted of a loose jacket of fine blue cloth
garnished with gold buttons, a fine linen shirt of snowy whiteness,
loose white nankeen trousers confined at the waist by a crimson silk
sash, and a pair of canvas slippers on his otherwise naked feet. He
wore a pair of gold rings in his small well-shaped ears, and the gold-
mounted horn handle of what was doubtless a stiletto peeped
unobtrusively from among the folds of his sash. A crimson