We must request the reader to bear this in mind, for on the truth of certain dates hangs much of the tale of mystery and crime which we are about to reveal.
The gossips of New Orleans were ready to insinuate that the Spaniard's heart would surely be in a little danger from the presence of so young and lovely a woman as the French governess, but they soon grew tired of whispering this, for it was speedily perceived by all who knew Don Juan Moraquitos that his heart was buried in the mausoleum of his fair young wife, Olympia, and that all the love of which his proud nature was capable of was lavished on his only child.
Some girls in the position of Pauline Corsi might have nourished ambitious hopes, and might have angled for the heart and hand of the wealthy Spaniard; but it was impossible to suspect the light-hearted and frivolous young Frenchwoman of the mean vices of the schemer. She was a thing of sunshine and gladness—gay and heedless as the birds she tended in her chamber, careless of the morrow as the flower that perfumed her balcony. So thought all who knew Pauline Corsi.
Did any of them know her rightly?
The hideous skeleton, Time, whose bony hand lifts, inch by inch and day by day, the dark and pall-like curtain that hangs before the vast stage of the future, can alone answer this question.
Camillia Moraquitos was much attached to her old governess. All her varied accomplishments she owed to Mademoiselle Corsi; and, far too generous and high-minded to consider the handsome salary paid to the Frenchwoman a sufficient recompense for her services, she looked upon Pauline's devotion to her as an obligation which could only be paid by gratitude and affection.
The young heiress had often endeavored to bestow some handsome present upon her instructress (a valuable article of jewelry—a ring, a chain, a bracelet), but always to be firmly, though kindly repulsed.
"No, Camillia," Mademoiselle Corsi would reply, "I will take no gift from you but affection—that is a priceless treasure. Bestow that upon me, and you would amply reward me for a lifetime of devotion; the brief years I have given to your instruction have been more than repaid by my pupil's love."
Haughty and reserved as Camillia was to mere acquaintances, she was almost foolishly confiding to those whom she loved.
She had never kept a secret from Pauline Corsi until within this last year, and even then she would have told all to her trusted companion, had she not been forbidden to do so by one whom she loved even better than the Frenchwoman.