Don Guzman's calculations were correct, or seemed so. Since his departure from Buenos Aires, he had never heard of his brother: no one knew what had become of him, nor whether he were alive or dead.
Five years after his arrival at the hacienda, a fresh misfortune overtook the poor exile. Doña Antonia, who had never completely recovered the shock to her mind, the consequences of the terrible occurrences in the Pampas, and whose health had always languished since, had expired in his arms, after giving birth to a daughter.
This daughter was the charming girl whom we have presented to our readers under the name of Doña Hermosa.
From that time forth, Don Pedro concentrated his affections on this delicate creature, the only bond which attached him to an existence which might have been so happy, and which, struck by the cold breath of adversity, had suddenly become so miserable.
Of all those who had accompanied him into exile, he alone remained. All the rest were dead: he had seen them sink, one after another, into the tomb. Manuela, Luco's wife, the confidante of her master's sorrows, was charged with the education of his daughter; a charge she executed with care and devotion beyond praise.
Such was the tale related by the major-domo. In order that the reader may fully understand the events recorded in subsequent chapters, it is necessary to remind him that Doña Hermosa was sixteen at the commencement of our story, and that four years intervened between the retirement of Don Pedro to the Hacienda de las Norias and the birth of his daughter. Consequently twenty years had elapsed since the occurrence of the circumstances narrated by Don Estevan Diaz.
[1] See "Stoneheart," the companion volume.