g of
this foul intruder in the terms she had deserved, they fell back from me
as from one who had blasphemed. A superstitious reverence plainly
encircled the stranger; I could read it in their changed demeanour, and
in the paleness that prevailed upon the natural colour of their faces;
and their fear perhaps reacted on myself. I looked again at Madam
Mendizabal. She stood perfectly composed, watching my face through her
glasses with a smile of scorn; and at the sight of her assured
superiority to all my threats, a cry broke from my lips, a cry of rage,
fear, and despair, and I fled from the verandah and the house.

I ran I knew not where, but it was towards the beach. As I went, my head
whirled; so strange, so sudden, were these events and insults. Who was
she? what, in Heaven's name, the power she wielded over my obedient
negroes? Why had she addressed me as a slave? why spoken of my father's
sale? To all these tumultuary questions I could find no answer; and, in
the turmoil of my mind, nothing was plain except the hateful, leering
image of the woman.

I was still running, mad with fear and anger, when I saw my father
coming to meet me from the landing-place; and, with a cry that I
thought would have killed me, leaped into his arms and broke into a
passion of sobs and tears upon his bosom. He made me sit down below a
tall palmetto that grew not far off; comforted me, but with some
abstraction in his voice; and, as soon as I regained the least command
upon my feelings, asked me, not without harshness, what this grief
betokened. I was surprised by his tone into a still greater measure of
composure; and in firm tones, though still interrupted by sobs, I told
him there was a stranger in the island, at which I thought he started
and turned pale; that the servants would not obey me; that the
stranger's name was Madam Mendizabal, and, at that, he seemed to me both
troubled and relieved; that she had insulted me, treated me as a slave
(and here my father's brow began to darken), threatened to buy me at a
sale, and questioned my own servants before my face; and that, at last,
finding myself quite helpless and exposed to these intolerable
liberties, I had fled from the house in terror, indignation, and
amazement.

"Teresa," said my father, with singular gravity of voice, "I must make
to-day a call upon your courage; much must be told you, there is much
that you must do to help me; and my daughter must prove herself a woman
b