I had carried with me, on that upward climb, a lively recollection of Miss Mannersley as I had known her two years before.  I remembered her upright, almost stiff, slight figure, the graceful precision of her poses, the faultless symmetry and taste of her dress, and the atmosphere of a fastidious and wholesome cleanliness which exhaled from her.  In the lady I saw before me, half reclining in a rocking-chair, there was none of the stiffness and nicety.  Habited in a loose gown of some easy, flexible, but rich material, worn with that peculiarly indolent slouch of the Mexican woman, Mrs. Saltillo had parted with half her individuality.  Even her arched feet and thin ankles, the close-fitting boots or small slippers of which were wont to accent their delicacy, were now lost in a short, low-quartered kid shoe of the Spanish type, in which they moved loosely.  Her hair, which she had always worn with a certain Greek simplicity, was parted at one side.  Yet her face, with its regularity of feature, and small, thin, red-lipped mouth, was quite unchanged; and her velvety brown eyes were as beautiful and inscrutable as ever.

With the same glance I had taken in her surroundings, quite as incongruous to her former habits.  The furniture, though of old and heavy mahogany, had suffered from careless alien hands, and was interspersed with modern and unmatchable makeshifts, yet preserving the distinctly scant and formal attitude of furnished lodgings.  It was certainly unlike the artistic trifles and delicate refinements of her uncle’s drawing-room, which we all knew her taste had dictated and ruled.  The black and white engravings, the outlined heads of Minerva and Diana, were excluded from the walls for two cheap colored Catholic prints,—­a soulless Virgin, and the mystery of the Bleeding Heart.  Against the wall, in one corner, hung the only object which seemed a memento of their travels,—­a singular-looking upright Indian “papoose-case” or cradle, glaringly decorated with beads and paint, probably an Aztec relic.  On a round table, the velvet cover of which showed marks of usage and abusage, there were scattered books and writing materials; and my editorial instinct suddenly recognized, with a thrill of apprehension, the loose leaves of an undoubted manuscript.  This circumstance, taken with the fact of Donna Urania’s hair being parted on one side, and the general negligee of her appearance, was a disturbing revelation.

My wandering eye apparently struck her, for after the first greeting she pointed to the manuscript with a smile.

“Yes; that is the manuscript.  I suppose Enriquez told you all about it?  He said he had written.”

I was dumfounded.  I certainly had not understood all of Enriquez’s slang; it was always so decidedly his own, and peculiar.  Yet I could not recall any allusion to this.

“He told me something of it, but very vaguely,” I ventured to say deprecatingly; “but I am afraid that I thought more of seeing my old friend again than of anything else.”