s) to the vivacious
past of Mrs. Goodwin when her audacious and gleeful abandon in light
opera captured the mature president's fancy, or to her share in that
statesman's downfall and malfeasance, the Latin shrug of the shoulder
would be your only answer and rebuttal. What prejudices there were
in Coralio concerning Senora Goodwin seemed now to be in her favour,
whatever they had been in the past.

It would seem that the story is ended, instead of begun; that the
close of tragedy and the climax of a romance have covered the ground
of interest; but, to the more curious reader it shall be some slight
instruction to trace the close threads that underlie the ingenuous
web of circumstances.

The headpiece bearing the name of President Miraflores is daily
scrubbed with soap-bark and sand. An old half-breed Indian tends the
grave with fidelity and the dawdling minuteness of inherited sloth.
He chops down the weeds and ever-springing grass with his machete, he
plucks ants and scorpions and beetles from it with his horny fingers,
and sprinkles its turf with water from the plaza fountain. There is
no grave anywhere so well kept and ordered.

Only by following out the underlying threads will it be made clear
why the old Indian, Galvez, is secretly paid to keep green the
grave of President Miraflores by one who never saw that unfortunate
statesman in life or in death, and why that one was wont to walk in
the twilight, casting from a distance looks of gentle sadness upon
that unhonoured mound.

Elsewhere than at Coralio one learns of the impetuous career
of Isabel Guilbert. New Orleans gave her birth and the mingled
French and Spanish creole nature that tinctured her life with such
turbulence and warmth. She had little education, but a knowledge of
men and motives that seemed to have come by instinct. Far beyond the
common woman was she endowed with intrepid rashness, with a love for
the pursuit of adventure to the brink of danger, and with desire for
the pleasures of life. Her spirit was one to chafe under any curb;
she was Eve after the fall, but before the bitterness of it was felt.
She wore life as a rose in her bosom.

Of the legion of men who had been at her feet it was said that but
one was so fortunate as to engage her fancy. To President Miraflores,
the brilliant but unstable ruler of Anchuria, she yielded the key to
her resolute heart. How, then, do we find her (as the Coralians would
have told you) the wife of Frank