Gambling here was no fugitive evader of the law, no crime to be enjoyed in secret, but was an institution legalized and flourishing. There even was a public gaming house, where civil officers, traders, merchants, travelers, and the clergy grouped avidly around the _monte_ tables and played at fever heat, momentarily beyond the reach of any other obsession. Regularly the governor and his wife graced the temple of chance with their august persons and held informal levees among the tables, making the place a Mecca for favor-seekers and sycophants, and a golden treasury for the "house." At this time, so soon after the arrival of two great caravans and the collection of so much impost, part of which stuck to every finger that handled it, the play ran high throughout the crowded room. The round of festivities attending the arrival of the wagon trains were not yet stilled, and fandangoes nightly gave hilarity a safety valve. Great lumbering _carretas_, their wheels cut from solid sections of tree trunks and the whole vehicle devoid of even a single scrap of precious iron, shrieked and rattled through the dark streets, filled with shoddy cavaliers and dazzling women, whose dresses seemed planned to tempt the resolutions of a saint. _Rebosa_ or lace _mantilla_ over full, rounded, dark and satiny breasts; fans wielded with an inherited art, to coax and repel the victims of great and smouldering eyes of jet, which melted one moment to blaze the next--this was the magic segment of the clock's round. Now the eyesores of the squalid town were hidden from critical sight, and the alluring softness and mystery of an ancient Spanish city made one forget the almost unforgetable. Life and Death danced hand in hand; Love and Hate bowed and curtsied, and the mad green fires of Jealousy flickered or flared; while the poverty and the sordid tragedies of the day gave place to tingling Romance in the feathery night. Violins and guitars caressed the darkness with throbbing strains, catching the breath, tingling the nerves and turning dull flesh to pulsing ecstasy. To the fandango came a flower of a far-off French-American metropolis, strangely listless; and here felt her blood slowly transmute to wine and every nerve become a harp-string to make sad music for her soul. Small wonder that Armijo stood speechless in the sight of such a one as she, and forgot to press his questioning as to four who had somewhere left that wagon train; small wonder that he gave no heed to men in the presence of this exotic flower not yet unfolded, in whose veins the French blood of the mother coursed with the Saxon of the father, and played strange and wondrous pranks in delicate features, vivacious eyes, and hidden whimsicalities now beginning to peek forth.