"Ah yes! how foolish! Here I am talking about my own affairs, when I should be speaking of Donna Dolores! Well, to begin. Let me first explain why she has put this matter in my hands. My husband and her father were friends, and had many business interests in common. As you have doubtless heard, she has always been very quiet, very reserved, very religious--almost a nun. I daresay she was driven into this isolation by reason of the delicacy of her position here, for you know--do you not?--that her mother was an Indian. It is only a few years ago that the old Governor, becoming a widower and childless, bethought himself of this Indian child, Dolores. He found the mother dead, and the girl living somewhere at a distant Mission as an acolyte. He brought her to San Antonio, had her christened, and made legally his daughter and heiress. She was a mere slip of a thing, about fourteen or fifteen. She might have had a pretty complexion, for some of these half-breeds are nearly white, but she had been stained when an infant with some barbarous and indelible dye, after the savage custom of her race. She is now a light copper colour, not unlike those bronze shepherdesses on yonder clock. In spite of all this I call her pretty. Perhaps it is because I love her and am prejudiced. But you gentlemen are so critical about complexion and colour--no wonder that the poor child refuses to see anybody, and never goes into society at all. It is a shame! But--pardon, Mr. Poinsett, here am I gossiping about your client's looks, when I should be stating her grievances." "No, no!" said Arthur, hastily, "go on--in your own way." Mrs Sepulvida lifted her forefinger archly. "Ah! is it so, Don Arturo? I thought so! Well, it is a great shame that she is not here for you to judge for yourself." Angry with himself for his embarrassment, and for the rising colour on his cheek, Arthur would have explained himself, but the lady, with feminine tact, did not permit him. "To proceed: Partly because I did not participate in the prejudices with which the old families here regarded her race and colour, partly, perhaps, because we were both strangers here, we became friends. At first she resisted all my advances--indeed, I think she was more shy of me than the others, but I triumphed in time, and we became good friends. Friends, you understand, Mr. Poinsett, not _confidants_. You men, I know, deem this impossible, but Donna Dolores is a singular girl, and I have never, except upon the most general topics, won her from her habitual reserve. And I possess perhaps her only friendship." "Except Father Felipe, her confessor?" Mrs. Sepulvida shrugged her shoulders, and then borrowed the habitual sceptical formula of San Antonio. "_Quien sabe?_ But I am rambling again. Now for the case." She rose, and taking from the drawer of the secretary an envelope, drew out some papers it contained, and referred to them as she went on.