4

DAUGHTERS OF THE GOYA SQUIRE.

guay" are now performing this rotatory motion in the land of the Jesuits, it is no unfair inference to assume that these Letters on the River Plate may, ere long, circulate in Corrientes.

I shall call the country squire, therefore, Don Baltazar Gonzalez. Each of his two grown up daughters had her own peculiar style of beauty, but on the whole the oldest, Rosa, or, as she was called, Rosita, was generally esteemed the prettiest. She had large and laughing blue eyes, a very scarce, and therefore much admired, eye in South America; her features were not so regular in detail as they were agreeable in the toute ensemble; her lips were

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cherry ripe," her ever ready smile made her cheek a sort of freehold for her dimples; her colour exhibited a loving struggle between the rose and the lily for supremacy; her figure, if not petite, scarcely rose to the middle height, and with handsome proportions,-it was more plump than spare. Her feet, like those of many of the South American ladies, were small, and her ankle well turned; her step was elastic, her dancing perfection; and altogether she deserved to be, as she always was, pronounced to be a very fine girl.

I have begun by hastily delineating the external

appearance of the Goya belle, because that being the most obvious to view, is always the first and immediate object of attraction; but I should do great injustice to Doña Rosita were I not to add, that she was a lively, agreeable, and kind hearted girl; full of fun and glee, but possessed, for the more serious avocations of life, of warm affections, a good temper, and gentle disposition, which rendered her a general favourite in Goya.

It will not be doubted by my fair readers, nor by any other class of them, that Rosita had many beaux; indeed she ran a great risk of becoming one of those unfortunate beauties who have so many contending rivals as to end in a state of single blessedness. Everybody admired Rosita ; but then everybody seeing that everybody admired her, nobody in particular appeared courageous enough to step forward and take a preeminent stand with the fair object of general competition; no one bold enough to disdain all other pretenders but himself, and manfully to lay claim to the prize and carry it off. Thus Rosita was forced, perhaps, into a general flirtation, which she did not like,her heart was not satisfied, but her vanity was nurtured and kept alive by general admiration.

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THE YOUNG LOVER, DUVAL.

Among Rosa's "general" admirers, my brother was favourably recognized on one or two occasions that he visited Goya, and I myself, as a neighbour and "general" admirer of good specimens of the fair sex, used now and then to spend agreeably an evening with Don Baltazar and his family, including, of course, the pretty Rosita.

At last, however, two of the many frequenters of Don Baltazar's house settled down into declared and especial lovers. One was an agreeable young man, in business, not over rich, but prudent and likely to rise in the world. He dressed well, had the quiet and insinuating way of your South American lover, played the guitar, danced, and had I know not how many other qualities calculated to win Rosita's heart. The other was a man, verging towards sixty, but hale, tall, erect, plausible, and rich. He was uncle of the comandante, had an entire sway over that functionary, and possessed no small influence in the political affairs of the part in which he resided of Artigas's dominions. But he was jealous, overbearing, tyrannical, and, in particular, he had a Spaniard's dislike of foreigners and of foreign influence of every kind.

Rosita very naturally preferred her younger and

THE OLD LOVER, MORA.

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more accomplished suitor, Francisco Duvàl; but as true love did never yet run smooth, her father favoured the pretensions of Don Antonio Mora. It was said, indeed, there were certain money transactions between the two latter, which had no little weight in turning the balance in favour of Don Antonio.

Be that as it may, there seemed to lie an insuperable barrier between the union of Francisco Duval and Rosa Gonzalez, and the general rumour was current that she was to be married to Mora. I was sorry to hear it, for although on very civil terms with him, he was no favourite of mine; and I had every reason to believe that he held me, in common with all foreigners, in dislike, if not in hatred.

When he used to visit Rosita, if by chance he found any young men there, but more especially Duval or myself, he entered with a scowl, and sat us out as a matter of course. Our younger

lover was very much afraid of Mora; for the latter, possessing an underhand influence with the comandante, Duval in the unsettled, if not still lawless state of the country, had an undefined dread that some sinister means might be employed to remove him from the scene, and with him the great obstacle

THE CONVITE

ONVITE,

OR DINNER PARTY.

to Mora's project of marrying Rosita. She, poor thing, got unhappy under this untoward state of the affairs of her heart; while her father and mother, afraid of driving her to extremities, and yet anxious to see her the wife of the rich Don Antonio, became uneasy spectators of the no-progress of their own plans, and of the increasing impatience and anger, under disappointment, of their favoured but chafed friend Mora.

Such was the state of affairs when we were on the eve of our departure from Goya, and there seemed but little chance of Duvàl being successful in the pending struggle. There is no Gretna Green in that country, otherwise I believe the Gordian knot would at once have been cut and the hymeneal one tied; but in the absence of the northern star which guides so many of our own perplexed pairs to the goal of matrimonial bliss, a new light, at any rate, was thrown on Don Francisco's dubious prospects by a simple and unlooked for incident which arose.

About a fortnight before the day on which we had fixed as that of our final departure from the province of Corrientes, I invited most of the great men of Goya to meet my brother at dinner, that is to say,