He would kiss her lightly, saying, coldly: "There, that will do; be a woman now, not a baby." Then she would call up a quiet dignity, until she could steal for a few moments away, unobserved, and press her hands tightly upon her heart, saying: "If he would only love me! If he would only love me, I could live away from home, away from Spain, from every thing, for him! I must learn to be a woman, and then, at least he'll respect me.
"Oh, dear! I wish he didn't think it so foolish in me to want to be loved! But I must go to him. I'll try and talk like a woman, but I don't know any thing about the business that occupies his thoughts and time. He never tells me any thing because he thinks I'm such a baby. If he'd only love me, and let me be a baby sometimes, I think I'd be more of a woman."
Then the young wife would try to call up from her weakness new strength, and wiping away the traces of her emotion, would go out to be what pleased her lord, only a little paler, but with heart-strings quivering like an Æolian harp in a cold north wind.
One year passed in the strange, new country, and a beautiful babe was born to the ancient house of De Strada, but the mother died, and was buried by the clear Lake of the Tulies.
Don Carlos wept for his beautiful young wife, whose heart had been a sealed book, "Love, the Secret of Happiness," written for him in an unknown tongue.
His days of mourning were few. The rain fell upon the new-made grave as he gave the infant in charge of an Indian nurse who had just lost her own little baby. The savage mother took the child to her bosom, while the polished father turned away and looked out upon the green hills rich in verdure, counting the probable increase of his flocks and herds in the coming year, and, in the pleasant prospect, forgot his sorrow.
The little Juanetta grew to be a beautiful, healthy child, under the care of her indulgent nurse.
She knew where all the wild flowers grew, could shoot an arrow very well, or climb a tree, and, in many of the curious arts of the tribe, was quite skillful.
She was well versed in all the Indian traditions, and believed them with childish credulity. She seemed to have drawn the wildness, of the Indian nature from the dusky bosom of her nurse, and with her little bow and arrow would roam the woods for whole days.