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. This old house, built by her grandfather when there were few houses in this suburb, she once liked to visit, but since her loss she has been but once in it. That was when you saw her, when she came to spend a few months in solitude. She would not even allow me to come and sit and talk to her! Think of that! She thinks nothing of her possessions and allows us to live here rent free, to grow vegetables and raise poultry for the market. That is what we do for a living; my husband and our little daughter attend to these things out of doors, and I look after the house."