It would be difficult to find landscape more lovely, or more interesting, than that which surrounds the city of Mexico. Look in what direction one will, the eye is furnished with a feast. Plains, verdant and varied in tint, from the light green of the _milpas_ (young maize), to the more sombre _maguey_ plants, which, in large plantations (magueyals), occupy a considerable portion of the surface; fields of _chili_ pepper and frijoles (kidney beans); here and there wide sheets of water between, glistening silver-like under the sun; bounding all a periphery of mountains, more than one of their summits white with never-melting snow--the grandest mountains, too, since they are the Cordilleras of the Sierra Madre or main Andean chain, which here parted by some Plutonic caprice, in its embrace the beautiful valley of Mexico, elevated more than seven thousand feet above the level of the sea. Surveying it from any roof in the city itself, the scene is one to delight the eye and gladden the heart. And yet on the azotea of a certain house, or rather in the _mirador_ above it, stood a young lady, who looked over it without delight in her eye or gladness in her heart. Instead, the impression upon her countenance told of thoughts that, besides being sad, dwelt not on the landscape or its beauties. Luisa Valverde it was, thinking of another land, beautiful too, where she had passed several years in exile; the last of them marked by an era the sweetest and happiest of her life. For it was there she first loved; Florence Kearney being he who had won her heart. And the beloved one--where was he now? She knew not; did not even know whether he still lived. He had parted from her without giving any clue, though it gave pain to her--ignorant of the exigencies which had ruled his sudden departure from New Orleans. He had told her, however, of his becoming captain of the volunteer band; which, as she soon after became aware, had proceeded direct to Texas. Furthermore, she had heard all about the issue of the ill-fated expedition; of the gallant struggle made by the men composing it, with the havoc caused in their ranks; of the survivors being brought on to the city of Mexico, and the cruel treatment they had been submitted to on the march; of their daring attempt to escape from the Guards, its successful issue for a time, till their sufferings among the mountains compelled them to a second surrender--in short, everything that had happened to that brave band of which her lover was one of the leaders.