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While the discovery of the murder had caused this wild excitement outside the walls of the hacienda, a far different scene was being enacted within. Mademoiselle La Croix, the governess of the two sisters Herlinda and Carmen Garcia, had arisen early, leaving her youngest charge asleep, and, hurriedly donning her dressing-gown, hastened to the adjoining apartment, where Herlinda was enjoying that deep sleep which comes to young and healthy natures with the dawn, rounding and completing the hours of perfect rest, which youthful activity both of body and mind so imperatively demands.

A beautiful girl, between fifteen and sixteen, in her perfect development of figure, as well as in the pure olive tints of her complexion, revealing her Castilian descent,—Herlinda Garcia lay upon the white pillows shaded by a canopy of lace, one arm thrown above her head, the other, bare to the elbow, thrown across a bosom that rose and fell with each breath she drew, with the regularity of perfect content. Yet she opened her eyes with a start, and uttered an exclamation of alarm, as Mademoiselle La Croix lightly touched her, saying half petulantly, as she turned away, “Oh, Mademoiselle, why have you wakened me? I was so happy just then! I was dreaming of John!”