The veil had fallen from before the unknown future, Buenos Aires stood face to face with her destiny. Her chains had been struck from her hands and from her feet, by events of which she could have no foreknowledge; she stood upright in her youthful strength, unfettered, and alone.
But Buenos Aires had looked upon Spain as upon a mother; now that Spain lay prostrate in her degradation she felt her tyranny no longer, she remembered only that she was her mother.
The waves of the sea toss up their heads rushing to and fro, dashing themselves in never-ending succession upon the shingly beach, each wave after its headlong rush sinking back again into the ocean, vanishing for ever, yet does the tide ever march steadily onwards. As are the waves of ocean, so are the thoughts of a youth, vacillating ever, yet ever advancing towards the one inevitable goal. As are the thoughts of a youth, so are the acts of a young nation, which is not yet known to be a nation, vacillating ever, yet ever advancing towards that one goal which is the object of all her aspirations—Independence.
[CHAPTER I]
MAGDALEN
The quinta of Don Alfonso Miranda was not a pretentious dwelling, nevertheless there were men in Buenos Aires who thought it one of the pleasantest houses in or about the city, in which they could wile away a leisure hour. Among others Lieutenant Gordon, during the last year of his residence in Buenos Aires, had been very fond of strolling out there either on foot or on horseback, and had frequently delighted the owner by telling him that while there he could almost fancy himself back in his native country, and certainly if any flat-roofed house with barred windows could remind an Englishman of England it was the house of Don Alfonso Miranda. Don Alfonso had lived so long in England that he had acquired many of the tastes of an Englishman, he had learnt by practical experience the meaning of the English word "comfort," and had fitted up his South American home with a variety of contrivances for keeping out the heat in summer and the cold in winter, which were complete novelties to the hospitable people who had welcomed him amongst them, and who had befriended his daughter when he fell under the ban of their Spanish rulers.
This house, after his release from prison, he had purchased from an American of the name of White, who had built it for himself, but had special reasons of his own for being glad to find a purchaser in Don Alfonso. This same Mr White had returned to Buenos Aires in the year 1807, in company with General Whitelock, and was much consulted by that unfortunate officer.
In one of the rooms in this house was a large, open fireplace, where cheerful wood fires burnt in the cold season. When Don Alfonso brought his daughter to live with him she made tea for him in the English fashion, presiding with demure gravity over her porcelain tea-cups, clustered round a tall, steaming urn. This tea-urn and the fireplace were to their native visitors most marvellous innovations, but Don Alfonso had now no greater pleasure in life than to sit cosily in an arm-chair beside his fire on a chilly winter evening, watching his daughter as she so presided at her own tea-table, listening to her voice as she chatted with some chance visitor, and thinking dreamily of his English home and his English wife, now both lost to him for ever. Don Alfonso was himself of rather taciturn disposition, but he liked to hear others talk, and there was no voice he loved to hear so much as that of his daughter Magdalen.