's side, of Spanish
Creole blood, but had been sent to the Atlantic coast, to receive a
school education under the care of her aunt, Mrs. Z.

This lady had kept her mostly at home with herself, and Mariana had gone
from her house to a day-school; but the aunt, being absent for a time in
Europe, she had now been unfortunately committed for some time to the
mercies of a boarding-school.

A strange bird she proved there,--a lonely swallow that could not make
for itself a summer. At first, her schoolmates were captivated with her
ways; her love of wild dances and sudden song, her freaks of passion and
of wit. She was always new, always surprising, and, for a time,
charming.

But, after awhile, they tired of her. She could never be depended on to
join in their plans, yet she expected them to follow out hers with
their whole strength. She was very loving, even infatuated in her own
affections, and exacted from those who had professed any love for her,
the devotion she was willing to bestow.

Yet there was a vein of haughty caprice in her character; a love of
solitude, which made her at times wish to retire entirely, and at these
times she would expect to be thoroughly understood, and let alone, yet
to be welcomed back when she returned. She did not thwart others in
their humors, but she never doubted of great indulgence from them.

Some singular habits she had which, when new, charmed, but, after
acquaintance, displeased her companions. She had by nature the same
habit and power of excitement that is described in the spinning
dervishes of the East. Like them, she would spin until all around her
were giddy, while her own brain, instead of being disturbed, was excited
to great action. Pausing, she would declaim verse of others or her own;
act many parts, with strange catch-words and burdens that seemed to act
with mystical power on her own fancy, sometimes stimulating her to
convulse the hearer with laughter, sometimes to melt him to tears. When
her power began to languish, she would spin again till fired to
recommence her singular drama, into which she wove figures from the
scenes of her earlier childhood, her companions, and the dignitaries she
sometimes saw, with fantasies unknown to life, unknown to heaven or
earth.

This excitement, as may be supposed, was not good for her. It oftenest
came on in the evening, and often spoiled her sleep. She would wake in
the night, and cheat her restlessness by inventions that teaz