And The
Third Person Was Their Daughter, As They Called Her, A Girl Of Fifteen
With A Clear White And Pink Skin, Regular Features, Beautiful Grey Eyes
And Light Brown Hair.
A perfect type of a nice looking English girl
such as one finds in any village, in almost any cottage, in the
Midlands or anywhere else in this island.
These two were silent, but at length, in one of the fat woman's brief
pauses, the girl spoke, in a Spanish in which one could detect no trace
of a foreign accent, in a low and pleasing voice, only to say something
about the garden. She was strangely earnest and appeared anxious to
impress on them that it was necessary to have certain beds of
vegetables they cultivated watered that very day lest they should be
lost owing to the heat and dryness. The man grunted and the woman said
yes, yes, yes, a dozen times. Then the girl left us, going back to her
garden, and the fat woman went on talking to me. I tried once or twice
to get her to tell me about her daughter, as she called her, but she
would not respond - she would at once go off into other subjects. Then I
tried something else and told her of my sight of a handsome young lady
in mourning I had once seen there feeding the pigeons. And now she
responded readily enough and told me the whole story of the lady.
She belonged to a good and very wealthy family of the city and was an
only child, and lost both parents when very young. She was a very
pretty girl of a joyous nature and a great favourite in society. At the
age of sixteen she became engaged to a young man who was also of a good
and wealthy family. After becoming engaged to her he went to the war in
Paraguay, and after an absence of two years, during which he had
distinguished himself in the field and won his captaincy, he returned
to marry her. She was at her own house waiting in joyful excitement to
receive him when his carriage arrived, and she flew to the door to
welcome him. He, seeing her, jumped out and came running to her with
his arms out to embrace her, but when still three or four yards distant
suddenly stopped short and throwing up his arms fell to the earth a
dead man. The shock of his death at this moment of supreme bliss for
both of them was more than she could bear; it brought on a fever of the
brain and it was feared that if she ever recovered it would be with a
shattered mind. But it was not so: she got well and her reason was not
lost, but she was changed into a different being from the happy girl of
other days - fond of society, of dress, of pleasures; full of life and
laughter. "Now she is sadness itself and will continue to wear mourning
for the rest of her life, and prefers always to be alone.
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