s, and I returned with him to his southern
home. Edgarda was but two years old when her dear father was taken from
us."

"Miss Thorne resembles her Spanish more than her English ancestors, I
fancy?" said Winthrop, looking at the handle of his riding-whip for a
moment, perhaps to divest the question of too closely personal a
character, the young lady herself being beside him. But this little
by-play was not needed. Mrs. Thorne had lived a solitary life so long
that her daughter, her daughter's ancestors, her daughter's resemblances
(the last, indeed, might be called historical), seemed to her quite
natural subjects for conversation; if Winthrop had gazed at Garda
herself, instead of at the handle of his riding-whip, that would have
seemed to her quite natural also.

"Edgarda is the portrait of her Spanish grandmother painted in English
colors," she answered, in one of her neatly arranged little phrases.

"An anomaly, therefore," commented Garda, who seemed rather tired of the
turn the conversation had taken. "But it can do no harm, Medusa-fashion,
because fastened forever upon a Florida wall."

"A Florida wall is not such a bad thing," answered Winthrop. "I am
thinking a little of buying one for myself."

"Ah, a residence in Gracias-a-Dios?" said Mrs. Thorne, her small, bright
blue eyes meeting his with a sort of screen suddenly drawn down over
them--a screen which he interpreted as a quick endeavor on her part to
conceal in their depths any consciousness that a certain desirable old
Spanish mansion was possibly to be obtained, and for a price which, to a
well-filled purse of the north, might seem almost comically small.

"No; I do not care for a house in the town," he answered. "I should
prefer something outside--more of a place, if I should buy at all."

"I cannot imagine why any one should wish to buy a place down here now,"
said Garda. "A house in Gracias-a-Dios, with a rose garden and a few
orange-trees, is all very well; you could stay there for two months or
so in the winter, and then close it and go north again. But what could
you do with a large place? Cotton and sugar are no longer worth raising,
now that we have no slaves. And as to one of the large orange groves
that people are beginning to talk about, there is no one here who could
manage it for you. You would have to see to it yourself, and that you
could never do. To begin with, the climate would kill you; and then
there are the snakes."

"Being a