This lady, a widow, was what the French call a _métisse_, the Spaniards a _mestizza_; that is, the daughter of a genuine Spaniard, and an Indian mother. I shall call her simply a _creole_, [Footnote: 'Creole.'--At that time the infusion of negro or African blood was small. Consequently none of the negro hideousness was diffused. After these intercomplexities had arisen between all complications of descent from three original strands, European, American, African, the distinctions of social consideration founded on them bred names so many, that a court calendar was necessary to keep you from blundering. As yet, the varieties were few. Meantime, the word _creole_ has always been misapplied in our English colonies to a person (though of strictly European blood,) simply because _born_ in the West Indies. In this English use, it expresses the same difference as the Romans indicated by _Hispanus_ and _Hispanicus_. The first meant a person of Spanish blood, a native of Spain; the second, a Roman born in Spain. So of _Germanus_ and _Germanicus_, _Italus_ and _Italicus_, _Anglus_ and _Anglicus_, &c.; an important distinction, on which see Casaubon _apud Scriptores. Hist. Augustan._] which will indicate her want of pure Spanish blood sufficiently to explain her deference for those who had it. She was a kind, liberal woman; rich rather more than needed where there were no opera boxes to rent--a widow about fifty years old in the wicked world's account, some forty-four in her own; and happy, above all, in the possession of a most lovely daughter, whom even the wicked world did not accuse of more than sixteen years. This daughter, Juana, was--But stop--let her open the door of the saloon in which the Senora and the cornet are conversing, and speak for herself. She did so, after an hour had passed; which length of time, to _her_ that never had any business whatever in her innocent life, seemed sufficient to settle the business of the old world and the new. Had Pietro Diaz (as Catalina now called herself) been really a Peter, and not a sham Peter, what a vision of loveliness would have rushed upon his sensibilities as the door opened! Do not expect me to describe her, for which, however, there are materials extant, sleeping in archives, where they have slept for two hundred and twenty years. It is enough that she is reported to have united the stately tread of Andalusian women with the innocent voluptuousness of Peruvian eyes. As to her complexion and figure, be it known that Juana's father was a gentleman from Grenada, having in his veins the grandest blood of all this earth, blood of Goths and Vandals, tainted (for which Heaven be thanked!) twice over with blood of Arabs--once through Moors, once through Jews; [Footnote: It is well known, that the very reason why the Spanish of all nations became the most gloomily jealous of a Jewish cross in the pedigree, was because, until the vigilance of the Church rose into ferocity, in no nation was