The quinta of Don Alfonso Miranda was not a pretentious dwelling, nevertheless there were men in Buenos Aires who thought it one of the pleasantest houses in or about the city, in which they could wile away a leisure hour. Among others Lieutenant Gordon, during the last year of his residence in Buenos Aires, had been very fond of strolling out there either on foot or on horseback, and had frequently delighted the owner by telling him that while there he could almost fancy himself back in his native country, and certainly if any flat-roofed house with barred windows could remind an Englishman of England it was the house of Don Alfonso Miranda. Don Alfonso had lived so long in England that he had acquired many of the tastes of an Englishman, he had learnt by practical experience the meaning of the English word "comfort," and had fitted up his South American home with a variety of contrivances for keeping out the heat in summer and the cold in winter, which were complete novelties to the hospitable people who had welcomed him amongst them, and who had befriended his daughter when he fell under the ban of their Spanish rulers.

This house, after his release from prison, he had purchased from an American of the name of White, who had built it for himself, but had special reasons of his own for being glad to find a purchaser in Don Alfonso. This same Mr White had returned to Buenos Aires in the year 1807, in company with General Whitelock, and was much consulted by that unfortunate officer.

In one of the rooms in this house was a large, open fireplace, where cheerful wood fires burnt in the cold season. When Don Alfonso brought his daughter to live with him she made tea for him in the English fashion, presiding with demure gravity over her porcelain tea-cups, clustered round a tall, steaming urn. This tea-urn and the fireplace were to their native visitors most marvellous innovations, but Don Alfonso had now no greater pleasure in life than to sit cosily in an arm-chair beside his fire on a chilly winter evening, watching his daughter as she so presided at her own tea-table, listening to her voice as she chatted with some chance visitor, and thinking dreamily of his English home and his English wife, now both lost to him for ever. Don Alfonso was himself of rather taciturn disposition, but he liked to hear others talk, and there was no voice he loved to hear so much as that of his daughter Magdalen.

Magdalen was but a very young woman, her teens wanted yet one of completion, but when she returned to the city, after her long visit at the Pajonales with the family of Don Fausto Velasquez, her father thought her quite old enough to govern his household for him. He had fitted up two rooms with great care for her especial use, adorning them with books, pictures, and trinkets which had years ago belonged to her mother, and which he had carefully packed up and brought with him across the ocean for the special purpose of some day bestowing them upon his daughter.

DoÑa Josefina and her friends found the Quinta de Don Alfonso a very pleasant resort in the warm summer evenings. It stood off a short distance from one of the main roads, separated from it and from the wide, open space which went by the name of the Plaza Miserere by thickly-planted trees.

Where ladies go, there young men are ever sure to follow, so that before her first summer at her father's quinta had passed over, Magdalen had taught some score of young men who had never tasted tea in their lives before, to drink it out of her porcelain cups. Among those who drank out of her porcelain cups this summer there were three who had found special favour in her eyes, Don Carlos EvaÑa, Don Marcelino Ponce de Leon, and Lieutenant Gordon, for they would now and then speak to her in English; her father having taken care that she should not forget her native tongue, generally speaking to her himself in that language, and she was glad when she could find any one to talk English with. Of English books she had what her friends thought a large collection, and these three friends would sometimes borrow some of these books from her, and talk to her about them after reading them. But one great trouble she had; she had not come at once to the quinta when she returned to the city with Don Fausto, but had remained several weeks with DoÑa Josefina, at whose house she had frequently met Dolores Ponce de Leon. Between Dolores and her a warm friendship had sprung up, in which there was more than friendship, for each became to the other as a sister, and as sisters they loved each other, telling each other unreservedly the deepest secrets of their hearts, hearts which had as yet known no deep emotion, and in which there were no secrets but such as they might have told unblushingly to all the world. Still they met occasionally at the house of Don Fausto Velasquez, where Magdalen went often, or at the house of Don Gregorio Lopez, where she went less frequently, but to the quinta Dolores never came, saying that her father had forbidden her. The reason of this remained a mystery to Magdalen, for when she had applied in her perplexity to DoÑa Josefina that lady had spoken to her such words of Don Alfonso that she felt she could never ask any more questions on the subject.

The outside of the house of Don Alfonso differed in one respect from the generality of the houses about Buenos Aires. On the eastern side, which was the front, instead of the usual verandah there stood before the main entrance a wide porch of trellis-work, over which honeysuckle and other flowering creepers climbed luxuriantly, loading the air in the summer-time with the sweet scent of flowers innumerable. The flooring of this porch, on a level with that of the house, was raised some two feet above the level of the garden, from which the approach was by three wide steps. In this porch it was a frequent custom with Don Alfonso to sit with his daughter or with their guests in the warm evenings of the summer and autumn, sheltered from the sun, and gazing through the foliage of the trees upon the green suburbs and upon the white houses of the nearer portion of the city, and farther away upon the summits of the towers and domes of churches.

Magdalen rejoiced with the joy of a young girl whose life so far had been passed amongst strangers, when she found herself at the head of her father's household, and her sweet womanly instincts developed themselves rapidly as she felt that the comfort of others depended upon her diligence and foresight. The household was but a small one, but there was much for her to do in the way of contrivance and arrangement, for Don Alfonso would never buy anything which could possibly be made at home, or which his quinta would produce.

So Magdalen passed the spring, summer, and autumn in great contentment with her father at his quinta; it was now winter, and though she had made frequent visits to her friends in the city, yet she had during all this time never passed one night from under her father's roof until the night of the 5th July, which she spent in very unwonted fashion under the roof of Don Fausto Velasquez, dancing and listening to soft speeches in the spacious saloons of DoÑa Josefina, which were crowded with all that Buenos Aires could furnish in the way of beauty and distinction.

The number of those having some claim to distinction in Buenos Aires was not great at that time, for until the first invasion of the English under Beresford the modes by which a native of Buenos Aires could distinguish himself were very few. Two English invasions had given opportunities for distinction, and officers of the Patricios and ArribeÑos who had shown skill or courage were the favoured guests of DoÑa Josefina on this occasion. Among these officers there was but one Spaniard, a captain in the regiment of the Andaluces. To this captain DoÑa Josefina showed great attention, introducing him to many a fair partner, whispering to them to pardon his coarse manners and want of address, as he was a protegÉ of hers, and had been lieutenant of the "Morenos de Ponce."

But of beauty Buenos Aires had enough and to spare. It is said (in Buenos Aires) that when Venus was apportioning her gifts among her sisters she gave pre-eminence in grace and elegance to the Spanish woman, in liveliness and savoir-faire to the Frenchwoman, to the Italian perfection of form and feature, to the Englishwoman a complexion clear as the morning, and so on, some special gift to the women of every race upon earth, but that she forgot the PorteÑa altogether, till being told of her neglect she took from each woman of every race a fragment of the special perfection of each one of them and bestowed it upon the PorteÑa, thus creating a race of women unequalled in the variety of their charms in any country under the sun. However that may be, it would be difficult to find anywhere such a collection of beauty as graced the saloons of DoÑa Josefina on this evening of the 5th July.

Magdalen was not a PorteÑa, her friends called her the "Inglesita," because England had been her birthplace. She was short in stature, irregular in feature, with high cheek-bones; her English birth had not even endowed her with a brilliant complexion, but her figure was good, her hands and feet were small, and there was an easy grace about her every movement which was in itself no inconsiderable charm. Throughout this evening she was surrounded by a constant succession of admirers emulous of her hand, and each one as he led her to a seat after a dance lingered near her, wondering to himself what it was that made him so linger.

She spoke little during the dances, for this was the first city ball at which she had ever been present; the brilliance of the scene somewhat embarrassed her, and many of those who sought an introduction to her she had never seen before. This was her first ball and she enjoyed it greatly, the pleasure which she felt beamed in her face; joy is infectious and produces joy in those who look upon it, by sympathy.

Her dress was of white muslin, richly embroidered, with a very short body and immense balloon sleeves padded with swan's-down, which stood out round her shoulders but left the greater part of her arms bare. Under this dress she wore another of blue silk, the outer dress of muslin being looped up at the left side with a small rosette of blue silk; both dresses were exceedingly long in the skirt, sweeping the ground for fully a yard and a half behind her as she walked. Her hair, rising straight up from her forehead, was combed in a fashion much in vogue at that day into one mass on the top of her head, and was sparingly sprinkled with powder; from the back a few curls fell down behind her ears, and two or three smaller curls lay in careful negligence upon her forehead and temples. She wore a necklace of pearls, from the centre of which hung a small gold cross, and her left wrist was encircled by a bracelet of plain gold.

About an hour before midnight, during a pause between two dances, Magdalen was walking down one of the rooms in company with Lieutenant Gordon, who was repeating to her some of the anecdotes which Marcelino Ponce de Leon had told about his negroes at the banquet not two hours before, when she was accosted by an officer in gala uniform, with the epaulets of a major on his shoulders. She started at his voice as he spoke to her, and then looked up at him with a glad smile, but as her eyes met his they fell beneath their earnest gaze and a warm flush spread over her cheeks. The officer who had addressed her, and whose bright dark eyes were riveted upon her face as he bowed lowly before her, was Marcelino himself.

Marcelino had never forgotten those eyes which had haunted him during the long summer and autumn which he had passed training his negroes, and he had eagerly accepted Don Alfonso's subsequent invitation to visit him at his quinta, but during the many evenings he had passed there since he had never again seen the same look in those eyes, often as he had looked into them in search of it, and he had learned to think of Magdalen as an amiable but very plain-featured girl, with a certain nameless fascination about her for which he could not account. Also, as a girl with a talent for conversation, and a voice to which he could listen for hours with the same feeling as though he had been listening to music.

Magdalen had inherited from her English mother a gift more charming than any physical beauty, and one less liable to fade, that of a most melodious voice. In Buenos Aires, where physical beauty is so general among women, a melodious voice is but rarely heard, and Marcelino had often caused great amusement to his friend Gordon during many months past by his mode of asking him to accompany him on a visit to Don Alfonso.

"Come out with me to the Miserere, and talk to your paisanita for me while I listen."

As Marcelino now looked upon Magdalen, with the girlish joy beaming in her face, he saw once again that same look in her eyes which had haunted him for so long and which he had never forgotten. Her face seemed to him lighted up with a new beauty all its own, a beauty far exceeding all beauty of feature or complexion, the beauty of expression. When she smiled upon him with the glad smile with which she received him, her soul looked out upon him through those large grey eyes, a soul in consonance with the sweet voice he loved to listen to, the soul of a large-hearted, loving woman. To Marcelino she never appeared plain-featured again.

He asked her hand for the next dance, and then instead of dancing they sauntered away to a quiet corner, where they sat down and talked together.

"So Gordon has been telling you about the banquet?" said Marcelino.

"Not much about the banquet, but about the speech you made," replied Magdalen.

"I made! Yes, I did make a speech of a sort; talked about my negroes, which is very easy for me to do; but his was the great speech, did not he tell you about that?"

"Not a word. What did he say?"

"He said one thing, which there are some of us will take care to spread all over the country. He said that a colony is an infant nation."

"You think so, I know. I have heard you say something like it more than once."

"Yes, but not in public, and before the Viceroy. In us poor Creoles it would be rank treason to say such a thing, but just at present an Englishman may say what he likes."

"Then when he goes there will be no one left among you who will dare to speak the truth openly?"

"No one, for a time at least; but the day is coming when all will be able to speak openly just what they think."

"Why not begin at once? I should think it was never too early to speak the truth."

"There you are mistaken; but you must think me very stupid to talk to you about politics in a ball-room, though I have seen you listen when others were talking politics at the quinta."

"I always listen, and then talk to papa about it afterwards. Papa and I are great politicians when we are alone together. I have never seen my uncle Don Francisco, but papa has talked to me for hours about him, though he hardly ever speaks of him to any one else."

"Allow me to compliment you on your dress, I admire the colours you have chosen; blue and white, are they your favourite colours?"

"Yes, they are, so I would wear them. DoÑa Josefina and Lola did all they could to persuade me to wear pink, but I can be very obstinate when I choose."

"And quite right too. I never saw you looking so well before, all the men seem to think so, it was ever so long before I could get a chance of speaking to you."

"That is because you are the hero of the ball, and have so many others to speak to. Does not Lola look beautiful this evening, quite like a little queen?"

"I think she has spoiled it by the way she has arranged her hair, the peinete[7] does not suit her at all, and I should think it must be very uncomfortable."

"La moda nunca incomoda,"[8] answered Magdalen.

"I am glad you have not followed the fashion," said Marcelino, "for the peinete would suit you even less than it does Lola."

As they spoke, a lady of fair stature and of radiant beauty, in the first bloom of womanhood, dressed in pink, and with masses of dark hair falling in silken curls upon her white shoulders, came sailing proudly down the room leaning upon the arm of a young officer; as she passed near them she turned her brilliant black eyes full upon Marcelino, and bending towards him with a peculiar wave of her fan, said in a low voice:

"Le felicito" (I congratulate you).

Magdalen, who had apparently not heard her words, gazed eagerly after her.

"What a beautiful girl," she said; "I do not think I ever saw such a beautiful girl. Who is she?"

"Elisa Puyrredon; she is sister to DoÑa Juana de Saenz-Valiente; some men say that the two sisters and my aunt Josefina are the three most beautiful women in Buenos Aires."

"And what do you say?"

"I don't know any woman equal in beauty to Elisa Puyrredon."

"But we were talking about my uncle," said Magdalen. "I am so proud to have such a man for my uncle. I think a man who has spent his life as he has, has done more that he may be proud of than the greatest conqueror that ever lived. He has always been beaten; but even Napoleon, with all the battles he has won, is not near so great a man in my eyes as my uncle Francisco."

As Magdalen spoke her face flushed, her enthusiasm beamed in her large grey eyes, tinging them with a darker colour than was usual to them; and Marcelino, watching her intently, forgot to speak, till meeting his wrapt gaze she bent her head and appeared intent only upon the figures on her fan.

"Then you think that a man who devotes himself to the welfare of his country, even if he fail and be proscribed and banished, has not spent his life in vain?" said Marcelino.

"In vain, no! Good work is never done in vain."

"You will miss Gordon very much."

"Indeed I shall, and so will you; but he says he will come back again, and I think he will."

Magdalen spoke this last sentence in a peculiarly confidential tone, raising her fan as she spoke, and looking over the edge of it at Marcelino, but the glance and the tone were alike thrown away upon that gentleman.

"He promised me long ago," replied he, "that if we have to fight for our freedom he will join us; but now I think we shall win it without fighting, the French are doing that for us. He likes the country so some day we shall have him back again. What will you do without him? You will have no one to read English to you in the porch next summer."

"Poor me! but it was very seldom he did read to me last summer. I think he likes galloping about better than reading. Last summer he was always in a hurry to get away, and his gallops were always in one direction."

"Yes, the traitor! he was always taking me to the Miserere in the afternoons, and then leaving me to find my way back by myself."

"Yet I never saw you angry with him for deserting you."

"The time passed so pleasantly that I never missed him till it was time to go back. You cannot think how I am wishing for the long days to come again."

"Papa likes the winter best."

"Yes, he likes to sit at his fireside while you make tea for him, but we PorteÑos like the open air better. For me the most pleasant place in any season is where you are."

"A compliment! You know that I do not like compliments," answered Magdalen, with a look of annoyance.

"I did not intend it as a compliment," said Marcelino.

"When men say things like that it sounds to me as if they were mocking one. There are some men who are always doing it, and it is so annoying. You have never said anything like that to me before."

"I never said a word to you yet that I did not mean. Do you not like to hear the truth spoken to you?"

"Yes, even if it be unpleasant."

"And I like to speak the truth when it is pleasant to do so; when it is not I prefer to keep silent."

"If you never speak anything but the truth to me we shall always be good friends, and I shall know how to interpret your silence."

"Then we are good friends now, for I have never said a word to you that is not true. I am going away, and I do not know when I shall be back. I should be very sorry to go away leaving you angry at anything I had said to you."

"You are going away! Where to?"

"To Rio Janeiro. I arranged it this morning. If the captain of the English frigate which is at Monte Video will give me a passage I am going with Gordon, so I shall not lose him so soon as you will."

"He does not know, at least he said nothing of it to me."

"No, I have not told him yet. No one knows but you and my father."

"Poor Dolores! she will be quite lonely, losing both you and Mr Gordon at once."

"Not so lonely as you generally are. She has always plenty of people about her. If she saw you more often she would miss us less. Could you not come and pay Aunt Josefina a visit of a month or so, I know she wants you to do so?"

"And leave papa all alone! Impossible!"

"Then I will tell you what to do. Come and spend one day every week with Aunt Josefina. Lola often tells me that she wishes she could see more of you than she does."

"Does she? Oh! I am so glad. I shall be here all day to-morrow till the evening, and then every Wednesday morning after this I will come in and spend the day with DoÑa Josefina. I am sure papa will let me if I ask him, and when I have a fixed day for coming then Lola will come too."

"Then when I come back the Wednesdays will be an established custom, and I shall think that I have done something to give you a pleasure by suggesting it. Every Wednesday while I am away I shall think that you and Lola are together, and when she speaks of me you will think of me for a moment, and will remember that I am thinking of you."