being not more than thirteen.

The natural capacity of all the children was good, although, from
self-will and indolence, they had grown up in a degree of ignorance
which could not have been tolerated except in a family living an
isolated plantation life in the midst of barbarized dependents. Savage
and untaught and passionate as they were, the work of teaching them was
not without its interest to me. A power of control was with me a natural
gift; and then that command of temper which is the common attribute of
well-trained persons in the Northern states, was something so singular
in this family as to invest its possessor with a certain awe; and my
calm, energetic voice, and determined manner, often acted as a charm on
their stormy natures.

But there was one member of the family of whom I have not yet
spoken,--and yet all this letter is about her,--the daughter of Don Jose
by his first marriage. Poor Dolores! poor child! God grant she may have
entered into his rest!

I need not describe her. You have seen her picture. And in the wild,
rude, discordant family, she always reminded me of the words, "a lily
among thorns." She was in her nature unlike all the rest, and, I may
say, unlike any one I ever saw. She seemed to live a lonely kind of life
in this disorderly household, often marked out as the object of the
spites and petty tyrannies of both parties. She was regarded with bitter
hatred and jealousy by Madame Mendoza, who was sure to visit her with
unsparing bitterness and cruelty after the occasional demonstrations of
fondness she received from her father. Her exquisite beauty and the
gentle softness of her manners made her such a contrast to her sisters
as constantly excited their ill-will. Unlike them all, she was
fastidiously neat in her personal habits, and orderly in all the little
arrangements of life.

She seemed to me in this family to be like some shy, beautiful pet
creature in the hands of rude, unappreciated owners, hunted from quarter
to quarter, and finding rest only by stealth. Yet she seemed to have no
perception of the harshness and cruelty with which she was treated. She
had grown up with it; it was the habit of her life to study peaceable
methods of averting or avoiding the various inconveniences and
annoyances of her lot, and secure to herself a little quiet.

It not unfrequently happened, amid the cabals and storms which shook the
family, that one party or the other took up and patronized D