aspect.

All at once, half-a-dozen horsemen appeared before her eyes, as if just
coming from the hills in the rear of the hacienda. The Spanish pennants
floating from their lances proclaimed them to be Royalist dragoons. One
rode a little in advance of the rest, evidently their leader. Several
other horsemen appeared, following them: until a large troop was seen
defiling across the plain.

Gertrudis heeded not those in rank. Her eyes were solely occupied by
the one who rode in front. He was too distant to be recognised by the
sight, but her heart told her who it was.

"I, too," murmured she to herself, "I have been rash in my words--in
pronouncing an anathema against those sons of our country who should
betray its cause. What matters it to the woman who loves, what flag her
beloved may fight under? His cause should be hers. Why did I not do as
my sister? Ah! why, indeed? Marianita is now happy, while I--" A sigh
choked her utterance, and with tears falling from her eyes she continued
silently to gaze after the horsemen, until their retreating forms melted
away into the golden haze of the sunset.

Not even once had their leader turned his face towards the hacienda, and
yet it was Don Rafael!

It was in reality the dragoon captain, going off in obedience to the
order he had received; and who, to conceal from his soldiers the anguish
of his spirit, had thus ridden past the hacienda without turning his
head to look back.

From this time it should have mattered little to Gertrudis where she
might reside. For her, Las Palmas had now only sad memories; but even
these seemed to attach her to the place; and she could not help
thinking, that her departure from Las Palmas would break the last link
that bound her to him she so devotedly loved.

When Don Rafael no longer breathed the same air with her, she found a
melancholy pleasure in taking care of his beautiful steed--the bay-brown
Roncador--that, having galloped off after the encounter with the men of
Arroyo, had been recaught by Don Mariano's vaqueros, and brought back to
the hacienda.

Shortly after the marriage of Marianita with Don Fernando de Lacarra was
celebrated. This union had been arranged, long previous to the breaking
out of the insurrection, and found no opposition on the part of Don
Mariano. Don Fernando was a Spaniard, it is true; but he had already
obtained the consent of the haciendado. Even under the changed
circumstances in which the