The image of the hunter was incessantly present to her thoughts, encircled with that ennobling glory which is won by the invincible energy of the man who struggles, body to body, with some immense danger, and forces it to acknowledge his superiority. She took delight in recalling to her partial mind the different scenes of that tragedy of a few hours, in which the hunter had played the principal character.
Her implacable memory, like that of all pure young girls, retraced with incredible fidelity the smallest details of those sublime phases.
In a word, she reconstructed in her thoughts the series of events in which the hunter had mingled, and in which he had, thanks to his indomitable courage and his presence of mind, extricated in so happy a fashion those he had suddenly come to succour, at the instant when they were without hope.
The hurried manner in which the hunter had left them, disdaining the most simple thanks, and appearing even unconcerned for those he had saved, had chilled the girl; she was piqued more than can be imagined by this real or affected indifference. And, consequently, she continually revolved means to make her preserver repent that indifference, if chance should a second time bring them together.
It is well known, although it may at the first glance appear a paradox, that from hatred, or, at least, from curiosity to love, there is but one step.
Doña Luz passed it at full speed, without perceiving it.
As we have said, Doña Luz had been educated in a convent, at the gates of which the sounds of the world died away without an echo. Her youth had passed calm and colourless, in the religious, or, rather, superstitious practices, upon which in Mexico religion is built. When her uncle took her from the convent to lead her with him through the journey he meditated into the prairies, the girl was ignorant of the most simple exigences of life, and had no more idea of the outward world, in which she was so suddenly cast, than a blind man has of the effulgent splendour of the sun's beams.
This ignorance, which seconded admirably the projects of the uncle, was for the niece a stumbling block against which she twenty times a day came into collision in spite of herself.
But, thanks to the care with which the general surrounded her, the few weeks which passed away before their departure from Mexico had been spent without too much pain by the young girl.
We feel called upon, however, to notice here an incident, trifling in appearance, but which left too deep a trace in the mind of Doña Luz not to be related.