for her father, she had made him afraid of her, not for his sake, but for her own.  Sometimes she would seem to be fond of him, and the parent’s heart would yearn within him as she twined her supple arms about him; and then some look she gave him, some half-articulated expression, would turn his cheek pale and almost make him shiver, and he would say kindly, “Now go, Elsie, dear,” and smile upon her as she went, and close and lock the door softly after her.  Then his forehead would knot and furrow itself, and the drops of anguish stand thick upon it.  He would go to the western window of his study and look at the solitary mound with the marble slab for its head-stone.  After his grief had had its way, he would kneel down and pray for his child as one who has no hope save in that special grace which can bring the most rebellious spirit into sweet subjection.  All this might seem like weakness in a parent having the charge of one sole daughter of his house and heart; but he had tried authority and tenderness by turns so long without any good effect, that he had become sore perplexed, and, surrounding her with cautious watchfulness as he best might, left her in the main to her own guidance and the merciful influences which Heaven might send down to direct her footsteps.

Meantime the boy grew up to youth and early manhood through a strange succession of adventures.  He had been at school at Buenos Ayres,—­had quarrelled with his mother’s relatives,—­had run off to the Pampas, and lived with the Gauchos;—­had made friends with the Indians, and ridden with them, it was rumored, in some of their savage forays,—­had returned and made up his quarrel,—­had got money by inheritance or otherwise,—­had troubled the peace of certain magistrates,—­had found it convenient to leave the City of Wholesome Breezes for a time, and had galloped off on a fast horse of his, (so it was said,) with some officers riding after him, who took good care (but this was only the popular story) not to catch him.  A few days after this he was taking his ice on the Alameda of Mendoza, and a week or two later sailed from Valparaiso for New York, carrying with him the horse with which he had scampered over the Plains, a trunk or two with his newly purchased outfit of, clothing and other conveniences, and a belt heavy with gold and with a few Brazilian diamonds sewed in it, enough in value to serve him for a long journey.

Dick Venner had seen life enough to wear out the earlier sensibilities of adolescence.  He was tired of worshipping or tyrannizing over the bistred or umbered beauties of mingled blood among whom he had been living.  Even that piquant exhibition which the Rio de Mendoza presents to the amateur of breathing sculpture failed to interest him.  He was thinking of a far-off village on the other side of the equator, and of the wild girl with whom he used to play and quarrel, a creature of a different race from these degenerate mongrels.