from them. Her father had watched her carefully, and come to
the conviction that it would be impossible to make her nature
take the American mintage. She was as distinctly Iberian as
Antonia was Anglo-American.

In her brothers the admixture of races had been only as alloy
to metal. Thomas Worth was but a darker copy of his father.
John had the romance and sensitive honor of old Spain, mingled
with the love of liberty, and the practical temper, of those
Worths who had defied both Charles the First and George the
Third. But Isabel had no soul-kinship with her father's
people. Robert Worth had seen in the Yturbide residencia in
Mexico the family portraits which they had brought with them
from Castile. Isabel was the Yturbide of her day. She had
all their physical traits, and from her large golden-black
eyes the same passionate soul looked forth. He felt that it
would be utter cruelty to send her among people who must
always be strangers to her.

So Isabel dreamed away her childhood at her mother's side, or
with the sisters in the convent, learning from them such
simple and useless matters as they considered necessary for a
damosel of family and fortune. On the night of the Senora
Valdez's reception, she had astonished every one by the
adorable grace of her dancing, and the captivating way in
which she used her fan. Her fingers touched the guitar as if
they had played it for a thousand years. She sang a Spanish
Romancero of El mio Cid with all the fire and tenderness of a
Castilian maid.