ch side, of which the lower part was
often shop or restaurant, it presented somewhat the same heavy, gloomy
appearance as the streets in Italian towns. The air was thick,
dust-laden, and evil-smelling, for the City of Mexico, though at an
elevation of 8,000 feet, has none of the crisp, healthful clearness,
usually to be found at that altitude. Built over the bed of an
enormous dried up lake, in the centre of an elevated table-land, it
is, even at the present day, badly drained and unhealthy.

We had some tea brought up to us and took it at a little table drawn
close to the window,--Suzee chattering away to me of the delights of
this new big city--as big as 'Frisco, she thought. And what gay hats
the women wore! She saw them passing underneath. Would I not take her
out to the shops and buy a great big white muslin hat like theirs,
covered with pink roses?

I promised I would, watching her with a smile.

She was certainly very lovely just now. She seemed to have bloomed
into fairer beauty than she had possessed at Sitka.

Doubtless her gratified passion and happy relations with me helped to
this result, for a woman's beauty depends almost wholly on her inner
life, the life of her emotions and passions.

After tea we went downstairs, hired a carriage, and drove to the
Paseo--or laid-out drive--which is the thing to do in Mexico at that
hour; and to follow the custom of the country you are in is the first
golden rule of the traveller who would enjoy himself.

It was about six o'clock, and darkness was closing in on the thick,
dust-filled air as we drove with the stream of other vehicles of all
descriptions, from the poorest hired carriage to the most splendidly
appointed barouche, into the Paseo, a wide, sweeping drive, lined each
side with trees and lighted with rows of electric arc-light lamps,
some of which glowed pinkly or sputtered out blue rays in the dusk.

It has never seemed to me a very cheerful matter, this drive between
the lights in the formal Paseo, this great string of carriages drawn
mostly by poor unhappy horses and filled with dressed-up women who
stare rudely at each other as they pass and re-pass, solemn and silent
ghosts in a world of grey shadow!

But the fashion amongst the Mexican women of painting and powdering to
an inordinate degree perhaps accounts for their love of this hour
between the lights, when they imagine the falseness of their
complexion cannot be detected.

After about an hou