While the soft echoes of piano and guitar floated through the luxurious saloons; while the rich contralto voice of Camillia, mingling with the chords of her guitar, enchanted her obsequious listeners, Paul toiled in his lonely chamber, only looking up now and then from his books and papers, to listen for a few brief moments to the sounds of laughter and revelry below. "Laugh on!" he exclaimed, as a sarcastic smile curved his finely-molded lips; "laugh on, frivolous and ignorant ones--whisper unmeaning compliments, and murmur inanities to my peerless Camillia! I do not fear you; for it is not thus she will be won." Augustus Horton was a rich man; he belonged to one of the best families in New Orleans, and the old Spaniard knew of no one better suited as a husband for his beloved daughter. Don Juan therefore encouraged the young planter's addresses, though at the same time thoroughly resolved to throw him off should any richer or more aristocratic suitor present himself. Camillia knew nothing of her father's intentions. All her admirers were alike indifferent to her, for her heart was irrevocably given, and her faith irrevocably pledged, to Paul Lisimon. While these changes had been slowly working among the heads of the household, the hand of Time had not been idle in the humble chambers of the Villa Moraquitos. White hairs were mingled in the black locks of the mulatto woman Pepita; the negress Zarah was bent with age, and Tristan, the negro lad, had become a man--a man with powerful passions and a subtle and cunning nature, hidden beneath the mask of pretended ignorance and simplicity. He could sing grotesque songs, and dance half-savage dances, as in the early days of his young mistress's youth when he was Camillia's only playfellow. He knew a hundred tricks of jugglery, sleight of hand by which he could amuse an idle hour, and even now he was often admitted to display his accomplishments before the Spanish girl, her devoted attendant Pepita, and her old governess, Mademoiselle Pauline Corsi, who still remained with her, no longer as instructress, but in the character of companion and friend. We have as yet refrained from speaking of the Frenchwoman; but as she may by-and-by play by no means an insignificant part in the great life drama we are relating, it is time that the reader should know more of her. Pauline Corsi was but seventeen years old when she first came to Villa Moraquitos as the preceptress of Camillia, then a child of six. She was therefore thirty years of age at the time of which we write. But although arrived at this comparatively mature period of life, she still retained much of her girlish beauty of extreme youth. Unlike most of her countrywomen, she was very fair, with large, limpid blue eyes, and a wealth of showery flaxen curls. Small and slender, with delicate little feet and hands, there was much in her appearance to indicate patrician extraction. Yet she never alluded to her country or her friends.