Within six months of the arrival of Don Juan Moraquitos at New Orleans, his wife died, leaving little Camillia--an only daughter. An old female slave whispered strange stories of the past. For six years the father scarce noticed the babe, who reminded him of his wife. He had a small estate on the banks of the Mississippi. It was a little paradise. Here, under care of two women, the infant was placed. The slave Pepita, who had nursed Olympia, the mother of Camillia, in her childhood, and had attained her in her death hour; and another female slave called Zarah, a woman whose husband had been sold to a merchant of Florida, but who had been allowed to keep her son with her. He was an active negro boy of about six years old. These two women, with a couple of stout negro slaves, who worked in the gardens, composed the entire establishment of the baby heiress. Time passed; the rosy lips began to form half-inarticulate murmurs, then gentle and loving words. The baby learned to speak her nurse's name, to prattle with the negro lad--Zarah's son. Pepita, the infant's foster-mother, loved the child with devotion. Zarah attended to the household work and waited on the nurse and her foster-child. As the baby, Camillia, grew into a laughing girl, the young negro loved to amuse the little heiress by indulging in all kinds of rough and impish gambols for her gratification. Pepita often let Tristan, the negro boy, to watch the slumbering child. It was six years after the death of Olympia when the stern father's heart first relented to his orphan child. He would see her! Even though the spirit of his lost Olympia seemed to rise from the grave, and gaze at him, out of the eyes of Camillia. The little girl was asleep upon a grassy bank. She awoke at the sound of the Spaniard's footstep, and uttered, a little scream of terror. The loneliness of her life had made the child timid. "You are not frightened of me, are you, Camillia?" "No." "Yet you screamed when I first saw you! A strange welcome for your father, Camillia." "Father? Are you my father?" "Yes, my Camillia, will you love me?" "I will try," answered the child, quietly. Don Juan clasped his child to his breast. "I have a playfellow here," said the child, pointing to the young negro. "Tristan is no fit playfellow for my little Camillia. Tristan is a slave." The young negro heard every word. "A slave!" he muttered, as Don Juan led the child toward the house. "A slave! Yes, I have been told that often enough!" A week after this, Camillia, the nurse, Pepita, Zarah, and the boy Tristan were removed to the Villa Moraquitos, in the suburbs of New Orleans. Camillia was now under the care of a governess, a Frenchwoman, Mademoiselle Pauline Corsi. This lady took no pleasure in the antics of Tristan--so he seldom saw Camillia. It was in the depth of the brief winter when the brother-in-law of Don Juan Moraquitos arrived at the villa.