Tunicú, to whom alone I confided what had passed between me and my admirer, scouted the notion of my alliance with the 'son of a nigger,' as he expressed it; but strange to tell, he did not seem angry at the fact of matrimony having been proposed by another.
'You are too fair and too refined,' said he, 'for the son of a black man. When you marry, you must be wedded to somebody having better antecedents than that, Ermiña mia.'
I felt the truth of his remark, and now began to consider my late offer in the light of an insult. The mulatto's pretensions to my hand must surely, I thought, have been induced by his knowledge of my birth, for he would not have ventured to make such a proposal to a white woman; and perfectly aware of my secret attachment, he seemed to have implied that I was incapable of commanding the true love of a white man. Impressed with these reflections, I resolved to test the truth of the mulatto's inuendos, and, for the first time, I broached to Tunicú the subject nearest my heart.
'Do you think, mi amor,' said I to my lover, 'that I shall ever marry as well as you could desire?'
Tunicú paused, before replying to my question, and then observed—turning his gaze from me as he spoke:—
'Why should not mi Ermiña marry well? She is young, beautiful, accomplished—'
—'and the daughter of a slave!' I added; my eyes moistening as I uttered the terrible words.
For a few moments my lover remained silent and pensive Then recovering himself, he began to converse in his old, confident, assuring manner, gratifying my imagination with pictures of events which were never to happen, and promising things impossible to be realised. At least nothing ever did happen as Tunicú had predicted, while one event shortly transpired which in his wildest dreams had never occurred to him.
That event was the Cuban insurrection, which, as you know, has already affected the lives of hundreds of my unhappy countrymen and countrywomen; but in what manner it would concern our future destinies, neither Tunicú nor I could possibly foretell.