life, a depth
of sadness which even the tenderness of Yaquita had not been able to
subdue.

Respected by all, placed in all the conditions that would seem necessary
to happiness, why was not this just man more cheerful and less reserved?
Why did he seem to be happy for others and not for himself? Was this
disposition attributable to some secret grief? Herein was a constant
source of anxiety to his wife.

Yaquita was now forty-four. In that tropical country where women are
already old at thirty she had learned the secret of resisting the
climate's destructive influences, and her features, a little sharpened
but still beautiful, retained the haughty outline of the Portuguese
type, in which nobility of face unites so naturally with dignity of
mind.

Benito and Minha responded with an affection unbounded and unceasing for
the love which their parents bore them.

Benito was now aged twenty-one, and quick, brave, and sympathetic,
contrasted outwardly with his friend Manoel, who was more serious and
reflective. It was a great treat for Benito, after quite a year passed
at Belem, so far from the fazenda, to return with his young friend to
his home to see once more his father, his mother, his sister, and to
find himself, enthusiastic hunter as he was, in the midst of these
superb forests of the Upper Amazon, some of whose secrets remained after
so many centuries still unsolved by man.

Minha was twenty years old. A lovely girl, brunette, and with large blue
eyes, eyes which seemed to open into her very soul; of middle height,
good figure, and winning grace, in every way the very image of Yaquita.
A little more serious than her brother, affable, good-natured, and
charitable, she was beloved by all. On this subject you could fearlessly
interrogate the humblest servants of the fazenda. It was unnecessary to
ask her brother's friend, Manoel Valdez, what he thought of her. He was
too much interested in the question to have replied without a certain
amount of partiality.

This sketch of the Garral family would not be complete, and would lack
some of its features, were we not to mention the numerous staff of the
fazenda.

In the first place, then, it behooves us to name an old negress, of some
sixty years, called Cybele, free through the will of her master, a slave
through her affection for him and his, and who had been the nurse
of Yaquita. She was one of the family. She thee-ed and thou-ed both
daughter and mother. The who