l carry there, understand that! Never will I go alive.
I have daggers; here on my wall are many of them, beautifully arranged;
I polish them daily, it is my one mournful pleasure; they are sharp as
lightning, and their lustre dazzles the eye. I have poison also; a drop,
and the daughter of your brother is white and cold at the feet of her
murderess. Enough! she will be avenged. Carlos Montfort lives; and you,
too, I know it, I feel it, would spring, would leap across the sea to
avenge your Rita, who fondly loves you. Hear me swear, my uncle, on my
knees; never, never will I go alive to that place of death, the convent.
(I pray you to pardon this blot; I spilt the ink, kneeling in passion;
what would you have?)

Your unhappy
RITA.

BELOVED MARGUERITE:--I have written to our dear and honoured uncle of
the perils which surround me. My life, my reason, are at stake. It may
be that I have but a few weeks more to live. Every day, therefore,
dearest, let me pour out my soul to you, now my one comfort on earth,
since my heart was laid in the grave of my Santayana.

It is night; all the house is wrapped in slumber; I alone wake and weep.
I seldom sleep now, save by fitful snatches. I sit as at this moment, by
my little table, my taper illuminated, in my peignoir (you would be
pleased with my peignoir, my poor Marguerite! it is white _mousseline
d'Inde_, flowing very full from the shoulders, falling in veritable
clouds about me, with deep ruffles of Valenciennes and bands of
insertion; the ribbons white, of course; maidens should mourn in white,
is it not so, Marguerite? no colour has approached me since my
bereavement; fortunately black and white are both becoming to me, while
that other, Concepcion, looks like a sick orange in either. Even the
flowers in my room are solely white.)

It seems a thousand years since I heard from you, my cool snow-pearl of
cousins. Write more often to your Rita, she implores you. I pine for
news of you, of Uncle John, of all at dear, dear Fernley. Alas! how
young I was there! a simple child, sporting among the Northern daisies.
Now, in the whirlwind of my passionate existence, I look back to that
peaceful summer. For you, Marguerite, the green oasis, the palm-trees,
the crystal spring; for me, the sand storm and the fiery death. No
matter! I live and die a daughter of Cuba, the gold star on my