‘Teresa,’ said my father, with singular gravity of voice, ‘I must make to-day a call upon your courage; much must be told you, there is much that you must do to help me; and my daughter must prove herself a woman by her spirit. As for this Mendizabal, what shall I say? or how am I to tell you what she is? Twenty years ago, she was the loveliest of slaves; to-day she is what you see her—prematurely old, disgraced by the practice of every vice and every nefarious industry, but free, rich, married, they say, to some reputable man, whom may Heaven assist! and exercising among her ancient mates, the slaves of Cuba, an influence as unbounded as its reason is mysterious. Horrible rites, it is supposed, cement her empire: the rites of Hoodoo. Be that as it may, I would have you dismiss the thought of this incomparable witch; it is not from her that danger threatens us; and into her hands, I make bold to promise, you shall never fall.’ ‘Father!’ I cried. ‘Fall? Was there any truth, then, in her words? Am I—O father, tell me plain; I can bear anything but this suspense.’ ‘I will tell you,’ he replied, with merciful bluntness. ‘Your mother was a slave; it was my design, so soon as I had saved a competence, to sail to the free land of Britain, where the law would suffer me to marry her: a design too long procrastinated; for death, at the last moment, intervened. You will now understand the heaviness with which your mother’s memory hangs about my neck.’ I cried out aloud, in pity for my parents; and in seeking to console the survivor, I forgot myself. ‘It matters not,’ resumed my father. ‘What I have left undone can never be repaired, and I must bear the penalty of my remorse. But, Teresa, with so cutting a reminder of the evils of delay, I set myself at once to do what was still possible: to liberate yourself.’ I began to break forth in thanks, but he checked me with a sombre roughness. ‘Your mother’s illness,’ he resumed, ‘had engaged too great a portion of my time; my business in the city had lain too long at the mercy of ignorant underlings; my head, my taste, my unequalled knowledge of the more precious stones, that art by which I can distinguish, even on the darkest night, a sapphire from a ruby, and tell at a glance in what quarter of the earth a gem was disinterred—all these had been too long absent from the conduct of affairs. Teresa, I was insolvent.’ ‘What matters that?’ I cried. ‘What matters poverty, if we be left together with our love and sacred memories?’