He took the doctor’s hand, and, as he held it, turned his luminous face and splendid eyes upon Antonia. A sympathetic smile brightened her own face like a flame. Then he went silently away, and Antonia watched him disappear among the shrubbery. “Come, Antonia! I am ready. We must not keep the Senora waiting too long.” “I am ready also, father.” Her voice was almost sad, and yet it had a tone of annoyance in it--“Don Luis is so imprudent,” she said. “He is always in trouble. He is full of enthusiasms; he is as impossible as his favorite, Don Quixote.” “And I thank God, Antonia, that I can yet feel with him. Woe to the centuries without Quixotes! Nothing will remain to them but--Sancho Panzas.” CHAPTER II. ANTONIA AND ISABEL. “He various changes of the world had known, And some vicissitudes of human fate, Still altering, never in a steady state Good after ill, and after pain delight, Alternate, like the scenes of day and night.” “Ladies whose bright eyes Rain influence.” “But who the limits of that power shall trace, Which a brave people into life can bring, Or hide at will, for freedom combating By just revenge inflamed?” For many years there had never been any doubt in the mind of Robert Worth as to the ultimate destiny of Texas, though he was by no means an adventurer, and had come into the beautiful land by a sequence of natural and business-like events. He was born in New York. In that city he studied his profession, and in eighteen hundred and three began its practice in an office near Contoit’s Hotel, opposite the City Park. One day he was summoned there to attend a sick man. His patient proved to be Don Jaime Urrea, and the rich Mexican grandee conceived a warm friendship for the young physician. At that very time, France had just ceded to the United States the territory of Louisiana, and its western boundary was a subject about which Americans were then angrily disputing. They asserted that it was the Rio Grande; but Spain, who naturally did not want Americans so near her own territory, denied the claim, and made the Sabine River the dividing line. And as Spain had been the original possessor of Louisiana, she considered herself authority on the subject. The question was on every tongue, and it was but natural that it should be discussed by Urrea and his physician. In fact, they talked continually of the disputed boundary, and of Mexico. And Mexico was then a name to conjure by. She was as yet a part of Spain, and a sharer in all her ancient glories. She was a land of romance, and her very name tasted on the lips, of gold, and of silver, and of precious stones. Urrea easily persuaded the young man to return to Mexico with him.