''How does he spend his time?' ''He alone can answer that question. Since the first hour of his entering the house he has shut himself up in that room, and no one has seen him quit it. Between you and me, I confess candidly, that my opinion of him is by no means favorable. Why, would you believe, that though he is as thin as a rail and as pale as a ghost, he won't admit that he is even slightly indisposed. If I ask him about his symptoms, he gets angry; and if I offer him any of my specifics, he has the ill-manners to exclaim: 'Bosh! Oh! that man is a wicked fellow; I have no confidence in him!' ''Many thanks, Señora Lopez, for your information,' said I, handing her the promised reward'--_vaya vm; con Dios!_' 'After her departure I began to reflect that my own conduct had not been much less dishonorable than hers. What right had I to tear aside the vail of mystery in which my neighbor wished to wrap himself? I owned to myself that I was very clearly in the wrong. And yet, having made this concession to the claims of conscience, my fancy was busy putting together the scraps I had gleaned. The field of speculation was so vast and unbounded that I knew not where to stop. The starting-point was easy. Curiosity began by asking, Why the deuce, Albert Pride was so carefully hiding himself away in the city of Mexico? He must be a fellow-countryman; because an Englishman, no matter how branded at home, by fraud or dishonor, could boldly strut about New-Orleans or New-York, without submitting to voluntary self-imprisonment in the city of Mexico. Was he a fraudulent merchant, or a bank-defaulter? Good heavens! such gentlemen generally assume such a graceful _nonchalance_, or else laugh at their little transactions so good-naturedly that such a supposition was ridiculous. Well, then, perhaps he had had a personal difficulty? I think that is the phrase, is it not, for sending a fellow-mortal on his last long journey? What of that? that even would be no reason for concealment, for once in Mexico, what had he to dread? Thus I went on, tormenting my mind with suppositions and conjectures without end, until at last I resolved to dispel my apparently inextricable tangle of mystery by taking a walk, as soon as I had finished my breakfast. Accordingly I sallied forth, turned my steps toward the Alameda, and at no great distance from one of the fountains I sat down on a bench, beneath the shade of one of the grand old trees. II.