Before he had been two years in Buenos Aires he married Doña Constancia Lopez y Viana, a daughter of Don Gregorio Lopez. This gentleman was a wealthy Creole who had immense estates in various parts of the province of Buenos Aires, where he reared vast herds of cattle, whose hides and tallow yielded him a very sufficient revenue. The manners and customs of the Argentines in those days were very simple, the harsh restrictions on commerce and on intercourse with the rest of the world preserved them from luxury. When living on one of his estancias Don Gregorio was little better housed and fed than his peons, but he ruled over them with an iron hand; short of life and death his power was absolute over most of them, for most of them were slaves. His residence in the city was a large rambling mansion, one storey high, with flat roofs and large patios. Here he spent most of his time, surrounded by a crowd of dependants of all ages and conditions; to all he dispensed with a lavish hand, exacting only in return implicit obedience. Don Gregorio had been twice married, his first wife had left him one son who bore his own name; the children of his second wife had added their mother's surname to his, and were known as the Lopez y Viana family; among them Don Roderigo Ponce de Leon had found his wife Constancia. They had lived happily together up to the year 1806, in which this story opens, having three sons, Marcelino, Juan Carlos, and Evaristo, and one daughter, Dolores, who differed greatly in appearance from all the rest of the family, having grey eyes shaded with long dark lashes, and hair of a bright chestnut colour which flowed over her shoulders in broad curls almost to her waist, surrounding her if she stood in the sunshine with a halo of glistening gold. This peculiarity endeared her to her father, who saw reproduced in her the traditional features of the ancient house of Ponce, features which time and intermarriage had almost obliterated in their family. Though Don Roderigo was an outcast from his own family, though new interests and new ties bound him to America, yet he remained at heart a Spaniard, he felt himself one of the dominant race, and could not look upon a native American as his equal. His haughty manners estranged him somewhat from his wife's family, but recommended him to the then Viceroy, who soon forgot the unfavourable report he had received of him, and advanced him from one post to another, till at the close of the last century many thought that the highest post open to any Spaniard in the colonies would at the next change be his.