One evening a miscellaneous company, including many ladies, were assembled in the large sala of the house of Don Gregorio Lopez. Many officers in uniform were there; they were the most favoured guests, envied by the men who were in plain clothes, and basking in the smiles of the ladies, who looked upon them as their defenders, and told them so in flattering words. One young officer was more especially selected for attention, he had been absent from the city for months. Slim and active, his uniform displayed to perfection his graceful figure, while his bronzed cheek and erect bearing marked him out as one to whom military duty was a profession, not a pastime, as it was to many of the citizen soldiers around him. Marcelino Ponce de Leon had marched his men to the Casa-teja, and leaving them there had come to town to place himself and his command at the orders of General Liniers, deeming his negroes now fit for active service. He had already received his orders, which were to march to the town of Ensenada and to report himself to his uncle Colonel Lopez of the Barrancas cavalry, who had the command of that important station, and whose regiment was spread in detachments along the coast. One of the ladies present was Doña Dalmacia, the wife of Don Isidro Lorea. "Come and talk to me, Don Marcelino," said she to him, as he crossed the room and passed near her chair. "I wish to speak to you about a friend of yours." "Always at your orders, Señora," said Marcelino, seating himself beside her. "Your friend Don Carlos Evaña is a patriot, so say you and some others who know him better than I do; but for my part I understand nothing of such patriotism. An invasion is coming, all our young men take some part in the preparations except he, he shuts himself up in his house and does nothing. Where was he last year? There are who say he was never in Paraguay at all, but was in England. It is known that there are Americans in London, who have for their own purposes encouraged and even asked the British Government to send out this expedition; probably he knows them, perhaps he is one of them, he was much in London before he came back from Europe." "Don Carlos does nothing because he thinks resistance is useless." "And he stirs not a hand to save our city from the dishonour of a second time being conquered by a foreign army." "He says that its conquest is dishonour to Spain, not to us; in this I do not agree with him." "I should think not. If we are beaten the loss and the dishonour will be ours. But I have no fear; on the 12th August we had no troops, now we have thousands; we shall win, and the glory will be ours. You will have your part in it, my friend, but as for Evaña--Pish! I am sorry that he is a friend of yours, and a protegé of Don Gregorio; if he were not he would long since have been where such traitors ought to be, in calabozo."