e of
the friendly admonitions which I have received. I do not provide myself
with the talismans which the sereno has recommended; but I watch the
old lady's ways more narrowly than I have before done, till I begin at
last to detect something like a malignant expression in her shrunken,
yellow-brown countenance.

I observe no change in her pretty daughter, though I must confess that
in one way, at least, La Perpetua is more 'charming' than ever. The
young girl is full of her approaching 'fiesta,' or saint's day, which
annual event is to be celebrated by an afternoon ball and early supper
at her humble home. The presents she expects to receive in the shape of
trays of dulces and confectionary will, she assures me, exceed those of
the past fiesta. Perpetua is the acknowledged belle of the 'barrio,' or
district, where she resides, and she has many admirers. But
unfortunately the young creole is not so white as her fair complexion
would lead one to suppose. Don Ramon is undoubtedly a white man, but his
wife belongs to the mulatto tribe, and Perpetua's origin is
unquestionably obscure. Still Dona Choncha has great hopes that her
pretty daughter will command a white alliance among her husband's
friends in spite of this drawback, and it is whispered that the
ambitious old dame has her eye upon more than one eligible suitor for
her child's whitey-brown hand. Mateo, the watchman--ever hard on Dona
Choncha--declares that it is her 'evil eye' that is being exercised in
Perpetua's behalf; but I heed him not, though I am now more than ever
cautious in my behaviour at the tobacconist's.

Whatever truth there may be in the watchman's assertion that I am the
object of enchantment, at present I have received no practical evidence
of it. When I probe Perpetua privately on the subject, I find that she
has little to tell, except that her mother is in the habit of visiting
a locality in the town unknown to Perpetua and Don Ramon, and that, upon
one occasion, she administered a harmless drug to her daughter, assuring
her that it was a protection against cholera.

As for Don Ramon--that good-natured gentleman is altogether a
disbeliever in witchcraft, and though he admits that the art is popular
among a certain class in Cuba, he is of opinion that the Cuban bruja, or
witch, is simply a high order of gipsy, whose chief object is pecuniary
gain. The government of the country, with its accustomed inertness, has
not yet established a law for th