thick walls and carry the torch into broader halls and lofty towers.
But superstition, prejudice, bitter pride, inexperience of life,
conjoined their shoulders and barred the way. As Diego Estenega had
discerned, under the thick Old-World shell of inherited impressions
was a plastic being of all womanly possibilities. But so little did
she know of herself, so futile was her struggle in the dark with only
sudden flashes to blind her and distort all she saw, that with nothing
to shape that moulding kernel it would shrink and wither, and in a few
years she would be but a polished shell, perfect of proportion, hollow
at the core.

But if strong intellectual juices sank into that sweet, pliant kernel,
developing it into the perfected form of woman, establishing the
current between the brain and the passions, finishing the work, or
leaving it half completed, as Circumstance vouchsafed?--what then?

"Ay, Señor!" exclaimed Prudencia, as two people, mounted on horses
glistening with silver, galloped into the court-yard. "Valencia and
Adan!"

I came out of the sala at that moment and watched them alight: Adan,
that faithful, dog-like adorer, of whose kind every beautiful woman
has a half-dozen or more, Valencia the bitter-hearted rival of
Chonita. She was a tall, dazzling creature, with flaming black eyes
large and heavily lashed, and a figure so lithe that she seemed to
sweep downward from her horse rather than spring to the ground. She
had the dark rich skin of Mexico--another source of envy and hatred,
for the Iturbi y Moncadas, like most of the aristocracy of the
country, were of pure Castilian blood and as white as porcelain in
consequence--and a red full mouth.