enmity; when Isabel never spoke to Esteban except in reproach or
anger, and when Esteban unlocked his lips only to taunt his wife
with the fact that she had been thwarted despite her cunning.

In most quarters, as time went on, the story of the Varona
treasure was forgotten, or at least put down as legendary. Only
Isabel, who, in spite of her husband's secretiveness, learned
much, and Pancho Cueto, who kept his own account of the annual
income from the business, held the matter in serious remembrance.
The overseer was a patient man; he watched with interest the
growing discord at the quinta and planned to profit by it, should
occasion offer.

It was only natural under such conditions that Dona Isabel should
learn to dislike her stepchildren--Esteban had told her frankly
that they would inherit whatever fortune he possessed. The thought
that, after all, she might never share in the treasure for which
she had sacrificed her youth and beauty was like to drive the
woman mad, and, as may be imagined, she found ways to vent her
spite upon the twins. She widened her hatred so as to include old
Sebastian and his daughter, and even went so far as to persecute
Evangelina's sweetheart, a slave named Asensio.

It had not taken Dona Isabel long to guess the reason of
Sebastian's many privileges, and one of her first efforts had been
to win the old man's confidence. It was in vain, however, that she
flattered and cajoled, or stormed and threatened; Sebastian
withstood her as a towering ceiba withstands the summer heat and
the winter hurricane.