Doña Jesuita was endowed with extraordinary beauty and angelic mildness; she appeared to have accepted, if not with joy, at least without any great pain, the kind of life to which her husband bad obliged her to submit; but in the depth of her large black languishing eye, in the paleness of her countenance, and, above all, in the shade of sadness which continually obscured her beautiful white brow, it was easy to divine that an ardent soul abode within that seducing statue, and that the heart, which was ignorant of itself, had turned all its feelings upon her children, whom she adored with all the virginal strength of maternal love, the most beautiful and the most holy of all loves.
As for Don Ramón, always good and anxious for his wife, whom he had never taken the pains to study, he had a right to believe her the happiest creature in the world, which, in fact, she became as soon as God made her a mother.
It was some minutes after sunset; the sky, by degrees, lost its purple tint, and grew rapidly darker; a few stars began to sparkle in the celestial vault, and the evening wind arose with a force that presaged for the night, one of those terrible storms which so often burst over these regions of the sun.
The mayoral, after having caused the rest of the ganado to be carefully shut up in the enclosure, assembled the vaqueros and the peons, and all directed their steps towards the hacienda, where the supper bell announced to them that the hour of rest was at length arrived.
As the major-domo passed the last, with a bow, before his master, the latter asked him:
"Well, Nô Eusebio, how many heads do we count this year?"
"Four hundred and fifty mi amo—my master," replied the mayoral, a tall, thin, wizened man, with a grayish head, and a countenance tanned like a piece of leather, stopping his horse and taking off his hat; "that is to say, seventy-five head more than last year. Our neighbours the jaguars and the Apaches have not done us any great damage this season."
"Thanks to you, Nô Eusebio," Don Ramón replied; "your vigilance has been great; I must find means to recompense you for it."
"My best recompense is the kind remark your lordship has just addressed to me," the mayoral, whose rough visage was lit up by a smile of satisfaction, replied. "Ought I not to watch over everything that belongs to you with the same zeal as if it were my own?"
"Thanks," the gentleman remarked with emotion, and shook his servant's hand. "I know how truly you are devoted to me.