heart set upon my marrying one of her laughters."

Victoria laughed in relief. She had come o know something of the Southern nature of her lover-elated by a trifle, correspondngly depressed by the smallest thing. This might be all there was of it, she thought, a piqued and disappointed mother, and a besieged young man troubled at the awkwardness of an unexpected situation and at the mortification he was causing an old friend.

It's very flattering to you, I'm sure," said she. "Does she give you your choice of the daughters?"

66 She does. However, it is to the oldest, Hilaria, that she maintains I am pledged.".

Pledged!" said Victoria, flushed and startled. "But you are not?"

"Securely not- that is, so I resolutely insist. But she, most unfortunately, maintains that a foolish passion of my boyhood and some ridiculous vows of faithfulness, made in the heat of disappointment, after I had been refused and laughed at - that these things bind me now after all these years, after all had passed from my mind." "Tell me, Rafael, tell me, I will believe you, is this all of it? and had this really all gone from your mind so that you felt yourself entirely and honorably free when you asked me to be your wife ?”

"Ah, can you doubt it? Can you think me guilty of such baseness? Under my word, the word and honor of a gentleman, I was free, I declare it, fully and honorably free in the sight of my conscience and of God when I sought your love. The contrary would have been impossible."

Victoria believed him. So would any one have done, even Allan Stevenson, had he seen the Mexican's face, so transparently honest, with its clear, straightforward eyes bearing witness to the words spoken. "But have you not told this woman all this ?"

that I could not assent to her view in the least particular."

"Then I do not see what remains. Where is the difficulty? Does not your obligation to her end with this explanation? Of course, you are sorry to give her pain, to disappoint her, but it is all due to her foolish mistake; it is no fault of yours."

"Ah, my dear Victoria, you do not know this woman. She is terribly resolute and passionate. She swears that if I do not marry one of her daughters and I told her that I could not, that I never would then, at least, I shall not marry you."

"But that is simply her passion, her mortification, is it not? She must know that it is an idle threat."

"She will do everything possible to prevent our marriage."

"But what? I do not see what she can do except make herself disagreeable. She may try to set you against me. She may even come to me to slander you. That will be disagreeable, but it will accomplish nothing."

"She will do that, and much more. She will appear in court at the time of the civil marriage, to denounce me before the judge." "Upon what possible ground?"

"That I am already pledged to her daugh

ter."

"But you are not."

"Far from it."

"Then you can deny it?" "Certainly."

"And disprove it?"

"Yes, or at least challenge proof from her of her assertion, which she would be bound to produce, but could not."

"Well, all that would be unpleasant, but what of it? She would effect nothing.

"She could undoubtedly cause delay." "We can wait, if that is all."

"But she will not be content with mere delay. It will be as well that I tell you all, the worst. She makes a most awful threat - this is the thing that really troubles me, that makes me shudder."

"What can it be?"

but first

"Alas, she solemnly swears let me tell you that she is a terrible woman. You do not know her. She has furious passions. It seems that her whole soul is aflame with rage over this affair. She is not only deeply chagrined but even desperate. She told her friends at home that she was coming to bring me a wife her daughter, you understand. She cannot endure the shame of failure. Remember all this and then you will see that I have good reason for agitation and alarm, for this desperate being, who will stop at nothing, swears most solemnly that if all else fails and I do not listen to her entreaties, she will denounce me in open court as the destroyer of her happiness and as a traitor to her daughter, and will then what a horror! will then kill herself at my feet."

Rafael, who had grown highly excited while speaking, as if he saw the scene he feared, sank back into his chair as he finished, white and gasping.

Victoria could not doubt his sincerity, could not believe that he was feigning this great anxiety, yet she could not understand the terror with which he seemed to view the possibility of the Señora's threat being fulfilled. Even to herself, a woman, there did not appear reason sufficient for such shrinking away from a scene of tragic pain, granting that it was certain to come. It seemed almost unmanly in Espinosa to show such

There

acute dread. She questioned him further. She drew from him all the details of his interview with the Señora, and witnessed his vivid reproductions of the frenzied earnestness with which the threat had been made. She began to be convinced that Rafael was right that the Señora would be desperate enough to do as she threatened. flashed into her mind all the instances she had heard of since coming to Mexico of frightful deeds due to jealousy and revenge on the part of women. She recalled with a shudder how a servant of her own had been arrested just on the point of stabbing to the heart a faithless lover. It began to appear less strange to her that Rafael should so implicitly believe that the Senora would fulfill the threat.

Still why should he give way to such extravagant fear? If worst came to worst, he might reflect that he was really guiltless. After trying all possible ways of averting the catastrophe, it would seem that innocence might exhibit greater calmness. She renewed her questions on this point.

Little by little she came to see the complexity of the feelings and motives that were struggling in Rafael's breast. There was the pain of suspected ingratitude, of unfaithfulness to a friend. Then there was the dread, which she could not fully comprehend, of ridicule and scandal, with consequent danger of frustrated ambition. She remained puzzled, not seeing justifying reason for his extreme distress; yet she believed in him. He loved her, and was telling the truth.

The long conversation had given her the infection of Rafael's agitation. She rose hastily, walked to the window and threw into the street the fragments of her bouquet. Then she turned to Rafael with tense lips and pale face, and said as she took her seat again, "Now we must consider what is to be done. What do you suggest?"

"Alas! my soul, I know not what to say.

"It may be wise to delay the marriage for a time," suggested Victoria. "She may go away, or change her plans."

But would you consent to that? It would be mortifying."

I would consent to anything you ask, Rafael."

"But I cannot ask it, unless you concede it first. Besides, I fear it would do little good. It would but encourage her; she would renew her threats. We should be as badly off at any other time as now."

"Perhaps, Rafael," the pale face flushed," perhaps we might go away secretly, without her knowledge, I mean, and be and have the ceremony performed somewhere else."

"Your cousin suggested that, But it would not be wise. It would be difficult to escape her, in the first place, for she will be sure to have her spies upon me. And then it would be a compromising thing to do, both for you and for me. She would find some other way, too, of avenging herself and humiliating me. My public career, would be cut short."

Rafael sat in a nervous silence, for a few moments. Then he said, without looking up, "A thing comes into my mind which might be effective. If I might go to the Señora and tell her that I so far yield as to hold my marriage to you in abeyance, then, when she finds that it will be vain to think of my ever loving one of her daughters, she may be contented with the small success she has won and go away."

"I do not understand. I thought you decided that delay would do no good." "Exactly so. But this is more than delay this is breaking off the affair for the present. That is, in our hearts and by our honor and by private understanding we should still be bound to each other indissolubly. But there would be no longer a

VOL. M.-NO. 39.

formal bond. In such a manner, I mean, that I could go to her and say that there is no engagement between us, that it is broken off."

Victoria stared blankly at her lover. "Then you ask me," said she, after a long pause, "to release you?"

"By no means, except as I say, as a matter of form. This might satisfy her and put her off. But the form, of course, is nothing beside the feelings of the heart. A love like mine can never alter. Always will you be to me the one object of devotion, yes, of adoration, and sadly to me will pass the days until I can come to call you my own before the whole world." Rafael lifted his eyes now, moist and shining, and let them meet Victoria's.

Her

VII.

sation began, of course, at a point removed as far as possible from what was uppermost in the minds of all, and they talked for a time about the latest news from the United States. Francis asked after her father. He was well but very much occupied, so the latest letters said. Then Allan, seeing as he thought an easy way of bringing in the absorbing subject, said, "I suppose, Vic, you have written, or will write right away, to your father about about the change in your plans - what happened today, I mean." Victoria looked up coldly. "Mr. Espinosa has told you, then?"

"Yes, he looked in at the office a moment. That is the reason we came over; to to sympathize with you."

"About what?" asked Victoria icily.

"O," said Allan in confusion, "of course not if you don't feel so. We rather thought it would be something of a disappointment to you; but if you feel, as I told Frank I hoped you would feel, but didn't think you would — that is, I mean, if you see that you were deceived in the man, and that it is better to find him out now than to have had the thing go on, why then, to be sure, there's nothing to be sorry about. On the contrary we may be glad it is all over."

"You seem to be better informed than I am. I am not aware that it is all over, as you express it."

"Not? Why you can't doubt it, I should think, that this postponement, or whatever you agree to call it, is just another way of saying that the affair is ended. I do hope, cousin, that you will not expose yourself to new deception at the hands of that tricky fellow."

"Do not be so free with your epithets," said Victoria hotly. "I consider Mr. Espinosa to be a gentleman of the highest honor."

"See here, Al," interposed Francis, “you must n't let your prejudices run away with you. We must remember that Espinosa is of a different race and training from ours.

Many of his ideas in these matters are naturally very different from ours."

Yes, I should say so," said Allan. "He has an idea of honor decidedly different from mine, I confess."

"There you go," replied Francis, “applying your American standard to everything. But just stop and think, and you will see how unfair that is. Our customs in regard to courtship and marriage and all that, are as you must admit, very different from those of this country. It would be strange if with all this, there should not be a different view of marriage in the mind of a Mexican — a view perfectly honorable from his standpoint, although it might seem unworthy from ours. That is what I am trying to do to put myself in Espinosa's place. If you would try to do that, you would n't be so bitter against him."

"Well," said Allan doggedly, "I can't follow you in your fine distinctions. I have but one standard of honor, and this man Espinosa, I must say, falls far below it. The idea of his being frightened by that wretched old woman and yielding everything at her dictation! And how stupid of him to think, if he really does think so, that this concession will put her off! Why, she will grip him all the harder. She will make him do now whatever she wants him to. My word for it, she will have him married to one of her daughters inside of six months- unless, indeed, she should think it best to marry him herself." Allan laughed at the thought.

are showing yourself to be. I have not deserved this from you."

Her voice broke and the tears began to come. Allan was thunderstruck.

"I sincerely beg your pardon, Victoria," said he remorsefully. "I was a brute to forget your feelings. But the truth is — no, I'll say nothing more about it. I begin to think I do not understand anything about this whole affair. I'd better keep still. Only I do humbly ask your forgiveness, cousin, for my brutality."

Victoria relented at once, though her tears continued to flow. Francis was too generous to press his view upon a fallen adversary, and too deferential to his cousin to distress her with further theorizings about her troubles. He turned to her, however, to ask her as delicately as he could the terms and nature of the agreement reached by her and Rafael.

"Then you consider yourself still bound to him," said he, after hearing all she had to say.

"He says that he shall hold himself bound to me, and that is the same thing." "Yet there is no longer a formal engagement?"

"No."

"Then what do you rely upon, if you will allow me to ask?"

"His honor. I do not pretend, cousin, to see all this clearly. I cannot understand it all. The dread of this woman which

Mr. Espinosa has, is a mystery to me, and yet I am sure that he is pure and honest in it all, and that he feels himself actuated by the highest motives. It seems weak, I admit. One of you would never act in that way. Yet I believe he is an honest man. He will be true to his word and to me." "But what is the outcome to be? How long are you to continue in this anomalous relation? What do you expect to do?"

"I shall wait. That is all I can do. As soon as he can claim me again, with safety and in peace, with a due regard to his reputation and public career, he will do it. I am willing to wait."

The brothers walked several blocks in silence, after leaving their cousin's door.

"Well, Frank," said Allan finally, "it beats me. That's all I've got to say. I am sorry for Victoria though."

"Yes," said his brother, "it 's too bad. But what could you expect? I had my fears all along. Love affairs between two persons of one nationality are bad enough. But when you bring in the unknown quantity of a different race, when you have to deal with a sense of honor that puts the emphasis in an unexpected place, when you are concerned with a conscience that has been trained to think that the greatest evil is to be mortified and distressed, and that the greatest reproach is ridicule, why the uncertainty in the case becomes so great that it is impossible to tell how you will come out." Jonas Bolivar.

S. IV. Eldredge. Ds. for

Charles S. Greene