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The diligence had driven through the village. To the astonishment of the idlers it stopped before the wall that circled the half-ruined quinta; a woman stepped through the doorway, and was helped to her seat. She had evidently been expected by the driver. They would have been still more surprised had they also seen the lady who waved a white hand at parting, and who turned back into the garden with a deep-drawn sigh of relief, followed by a groan that seemed to rend and distort the lips through which it came, and which she vainly strove to keep from trembling as she entered the house, and answered the call of her awakened daughter.

What can I say of the scene that followed? What that will awaken pity, unstained with blame, for that poor creature, so powerless in that land that her sisters, in others more blessed, perhaps, find it impossible to put themselves in imagination in her place even for a single moment? But the captive slave can writhe; woman, the pampered toy, may weep: and where woman was both (for even in Mexico a new era is dawning on her), she could struggle and despair and die,—but, as Herlinda knew too well, in youth at least she could not assert her womanhood, and make or mar her own destiny. In such a land, in such a cause, what champion would arise to beat down the iron laws of custom which manacled and crushed her? Not one!