And did they not, the Caraqueños, wonder and ask the cause of this?--What was it?--They do not know--But did they not ask the story of the lonely lady, so well known to them?--They asked many years since; but soon gave over; partly that the secret was impenetrable, partly for love of her. For they had, the poorest peasant of them, that quick sympathy to stanch heart’s wounds that all the conventions of the strenuous North must lack. God gives in all things compensation; and even sins, that are not mean or selfish, have their half atoning virtues. Their silence was soothing to her sorrow; they never knew. But the priest?--The Church of Rome is cruel, but it keeps its secrets. And only it and Heaven know if their lives were one long agony of misguidance, as many lives must be on earth--perhaps sometimes the priest-confessor may help in such affairs; if so, God speed the Jesuits. But one thing is sure: in all their lives, after their marriage, they never met. She died old, in gentle silence; he still young, upon a bloody field; and now their eyes at last met in Heaven, “her soul he knows not from her body, nor his love from God.” And we may, harmless, venture to tell what the people of Carácas say--with reverent memory, and loving glances at the old stone house; the hearts that inhabited it are cold; but its Spanish arms above the door still last, clear-cut as on the day the pride of this world’s life first bade the owner place them there. III. IN the Calvareo that evening the Doña Dolores walked alone, with only old Jacinta, the black nurse; black she was called, but her hair alone was black--blue-black; her face was of that fiery brown that marks the Venezuelan Indian; she was not fat, as most nurses, but stood erect, with fierce lurid eyes, her hair in two tight braids, and was following and watching her gentle charge. Jacinta had things to do in our story; her race has nothing of the merry sloth, the gross animality of the negro; what things Jacinta found to do, were done. She was scarce a dozen years older than her mistress, and her form was still as lithe, her step as firm and quick as that of that boy of hers, now twelve, in the military school, training under the _soutane’d_ Jesuits for the service of the Church--or Bolivar. And in the Calvareo also that evening were two men--nephew and uncle, both cousins of Dolores--and not, of course, walking with her or speaking to her, save by reverent bows; and, on the nephew’s part at least, by looks of fire. Yet the uncle might, perhaps, have walked with her, even in Carácas; for he, whom men called the General, despite his prouder titles, was not her cousin only, but her guardian.