-as witness Aspasia. It was a beautiful provision of nature that
made the feminine perceptions, as a general rule, so limited, so
confined to details, to the opinions and beliefs of their own families
and neighborhoods; in this restricted view lies all their safety."

"And ours?" suggested Winthrop.

"Ah, you belong to the new school of thought, I perceive," observed the
Doctor, stroking his smoothly shaven chin with his plump gloved hand.

The two men had begun to walk onward again, following their guide who
was now at the end of the rose wall. Here she disappeared; when they
reached the spot they found that she had taken a path which turned
northward along a little ridge--a path bordered on each side by stiff
Spanish-bayonets.

"Garda's education, however, has been, on the whole, good," said the
Doctor, as they too turned into this aisle. "Mistress Thorne, who was
herself an instructress of youth before her marriage, has been her
teacher in English branches; Spanish, of course, she learned from the
Old Madam; my sister Pamela (whom I had the great misfortune to lose a
little over a year ago) gave her lessons in embroidery, general
deportment, and the rudiments of French. As regards any knowledge of the
world, however, the child has lived in complete ignorance; we have
thought it better so, while things remain as they are. My own advice has
decidedly been that until she could enter the right society, the society
of the city of Charleston, for instance--it was better that she should
see none at all; she has therefore lived, and still continues to live,
the life, as I may well call it, of a novice or nun."

"The young gentleman who has just joined her is then, possibly, a monk?"
observed Winthrop.

The Doctor was near-sighted, and not at all fond of his spectacles; with
his bright eyes and quickly turning glance, it humiliated him to be
obliged to take out and put on these cumbrous aids to vision. On this
occasion, however, he did it with more alacrity than was usual with him.
"Ah," he said, when he had made out the two figures in front, "it is
only young Torres, a boy from the next plantation."

"A well-grown boy," commented the northerner.

"A mere stripling--a mere stripling of nineteen. He has but lately come
out from Spain (a Cuban by birth, but was sent over there to be
educated), and he cannot speak one word of English, sir--not one word."

"I believe Miss Thorne speaks Spanish, doesn't she?" remarked Win