"I grew rapidly, in fact so rapidly that I fell ill.  The doctors prescribed some treatments during my stay in town, one being I should ride horses.  Harness was sent from the hacienda and I rode every morning with one of my brothers.  I lived so secluded in San Luis, a sparsely populated town, that even there where I had spent the greater part of my life, no one knew me.  They thought I was the wife of the brother who rode with me. I  was thirteen and knew very few people, even very young ones.  The first day I was called Miss I turned pale and started to cry.  I was glad to be still a child and was horrified at their regarding me as a young girl.  At home I used to wear a short dress, in town a long one.  The young governor of the State liked to talk with me and courted me. As for me, I told him stories and was at a loss what else to say.  How naive!

"At this time and while I was riding, the man who was later to be my husband, as he himself later on told me, met me for the first time" (Aut., 67-69).