“Senhor,” said the stranger, then speaking for the first time, as if he read Aliaga’s thoughts--“I acknowledge myself in error for relating to you a narrative in which you must have felt there was little to interest you. Permit me to atone for it, by recounting to you a very brief one, in which I flatter myself you will be disposed to feel a very peculiar interest.”--“You assure me it will be brief,” said Aliaga. “Not only so, but the last I shall obtrude on your patience,” replied the stranger. “On that condition,” said Aliaga, “in God’s name, brother, proceed. And look you handle the matter discreetly, as you have said.”
“There was,” said the stranger, “a certain Spanish merchant, who set out prosperously in business; but, after a few years, finding his affairs assume an unfavourable aspect, and being tempted by an offer of partnership with a relative who was settled in the East Indies, had embarked for those countries with his wife and son, leaving behind him an infant daughter in Spain.”--“That was exactly my case,” said Aliaga, wholly unsuspicious of the tendency of this tale.
“Two years of successful occupation restored him to opulence, and to the hope of vast and future accumulation. Thus encouraged, our Spanish merchant entertained ideas of settling in the East Indies, and sent over for his young daughter with her nurse, who embarked for the East Indies with the first opportunity, which was then very rare.”--“This reminds me exactly of what occurred to myself,” said Aliaga, whose faculties were somewhat obtuse.
“The nurse and infant were supposed to have perished in a storm which wrecked the vessel on an isle near the mouth of a river, and in which the crew and passengers perished. It was said that the nurse and child alone escaped; that by some extraordinary chance they arrived at this isle, where the nurse died from fatigue and want of nourishment, and the child survived, and grew up a wild and beautiful daughter of nature, feeding on fruits,--and sleeping amid roses,--and drinking the pure element,--and inhaling the harmonies of heaven,--and repeating to herself the few Christian words her nurse had taught her, in answer to the melody of the birds that sung to her, and of the stream whose waves murmured in accordance to the pure and holy music of her unearthly heart.”--“I never heard a word of this before,” muttered Aliaga to himself. The stranger went on.