Then I, making inquiries of the steward as to the young lady’s features and carriage, he answered that to-morrow my own eyes would inform me better than his tongue, which could in no way do justice to such a theme as the great virtues and loveliness of his charming young mistress, whose single fault was that she laughed at the wedding ring of St. Gieronimo. Soon after this, our conversation broke off, the steward telling me he would be with me betimes in the morning. I lay long awake that night, conjuring up visions of Joseffa; at length, as sleep was coming over me, I heard, or dreamed I heard, the low tinkle of a guitar, and a manly voice, as of a serenader singing to it beneath an outside balcony. ‘The favoured suitor,’ I murmured, half asleep; and forthwith began to dream that I was his rival, and that Saint Gieronimo appeared again to explain that he meant the wedding ring with a view to my coming, and that Martin’s interpretation of the vision was quite erroneous. The morning came, and I was ushered into the presence of my most kind benefactors. They sat—the elder lady on a couch, the younger on a footstool at her feet—in a great lofty withdrawing-chamber, the walls and ceiling rarely carved, the floor of sweet-smelling wood, highly polished, and almost as slippery as ice, and the whole apartment darkened by blinds of a peculiar construction, which excluded the heat, but allowed the fresh breeze to pass in freely. As I advanced, the Señora Moranté held out her jewelled hand, which I kissed very respectfully. She was a tall, stately-looking dame, dressed in morning-robes, and her hair, which was beginning to turn grey, covered with festoons of black lace, gracefully arranged, and falling down upon her shoulders. But my eyes were, as the reader may guess, fixed with a far more delighted gaze upon Joseffa. She was, indeed, a beauty of the true Spanish mould. Her form vibrated, as it were, with a graceful suppleness which made her every movement a charm to see. Her oval face—lighted by eyes which alternately flashed and melted—was beaming, sometimes with the joyous rapture of gaily flushing spirits, sometimes, as it were, shaded by a grave expression of pretty coquettish modesty and bashfulness. Her lips were full and pouting, and every moment there came a merry smile upon them, with a sudden arching of her dark eyebrows, which quite enabled me to understand the sportive nature which laughed at poor Martin, with his ring of St. Grieronimo. She bowed slightly as I advanced, and then, flirting and twirling and shaking a fan made of gaily-coloured feathers before her face, stole rapid glances at me; all the while pouting her lips, and sometimes looking down to the ground, and then starting up, and whispering and laughing softly in her mother’s ear, or unto herself, playing all the while with one hand among her long black hair—her white fingers glancing nimbly amid the glossy clustering locks.