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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mariquita, by John Ayscough
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+Title: Mariquita
+       A Novel
+
+Author: John Ayscough
+
+Release Date: April 22, 2012 [EBook #39498]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARIQUITA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
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+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                                 MARIQUITA
+
+                                  A Novel
+
+                              BY JOHN AYSCOUGH
+
+
+    NEW YORK, CINCINNATI, CHICAGO
+    BENZIGER BROTHERS
+
+    COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY BENZIGER BROTHERS
+
+    Printed in the United States of America
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+TO
+
+SENORITA MARIQUITA GUTIERREZ
+
+
+SENORITA,
+
+It is, indeed, kind of you to condone, by your acceptance of the
+dedication of this small book, the theft of your name, perpetrated
+without your knowledge, in its title. And in thanking you for that
+acceptance I seize another opportunity of apologizing for that theft.
+
+I need not tell you that in drawing Mariquita's portrait I have not been
+guilty of the further liberty of attempting your own, since we have
+never met, except on paper, and you belong to that numerous party of my
+friends known to me only by welcome and kind letters. But I hope there
+may be a nearer likelihood of my meeting you than there now can be of my
+seeing your namesake.
+
+That you and some others may like her I earnestly trust: if not it must
+be the fault of my portrait, drawn perhaps with less skill than
+respectful affection.
+
+JOHN AYSCOUGH.
+
+
+
+
+MARIQUITA
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+A whole state, as big as England and Wales, and then half as big again,
+tilting smoothly upward towards, but never reaching, the Great Divide:
+the tilt so gradual that miles of land seem level; a vast sun-swept,
+breeze-swept upland always high above the level of the far, far-off sea,
+here in the western skirts of the state a mile above it. Its sky-scape
+always equal to its landscape, and dominant--as the sky can never be
+imagined in shut lands of close valleys, where trees are forever at war
+with the air and with the light.
+
+Here light and life seeming twin and inseparable: and the wind itself
+but the breathing of the light. What is called, by the foolish, a
+featureless country, that is with huge, fine features, not to be sought
+for but insistent, regnant, everywhere: space, tangible and palpable,
+height inevitably perceptible and recognizable in all the unviolated
+light, in the winds' smash, and the sun's, in the dancing sense of
+freedom: yet that dancing not frivolous, but gladly solemn.
+
+As to _little_ features they are slurred (to the slight glance) in the
+vast unity: but look for them, and they are myriad. The riverbanks hold
+them, between prairie-lip and water. The prairie-waves hold them. Life
+is innumerably present, though to the hasty sight it seems primarily and
+distinctly absent. There are myriads of God's little live preachers,
+doing each, from untold ages to untold ages, the unnoted things set them
+by Him to do, as their big brothers the sun and the wind, the rain and
+the soil do.
+
+Of the greater beasts fewer but plenty--fox, and timber-wolf, and
+coyote, and still to-day an antelope here and there.
+
+Of men few. Their dwellings parted by wide distances. Their voices
+scarce heard where no dwelling is at hand. But the dwellings, being
+solitary and rare, singularly home-stamped.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+Mariquita came out from the homestead, where there was nobody, and stood
+at its verge (where the prairie began abruptly) where there was nobody.
+She was twenty years old and had lived five of them here on the prairie,
+since her mother died, and she had come home to be her father's daughter
+and housekeeper, and all the servant he had. She was hardly taller now,
+and more slim. Her father did not know she was beautiful--at first he
+had been too much engaged in remembering her mother, who had been very
+blonde and fair, not at all like her. Her own skin was dark; and her
+rich hair was dark; her grave, soft, deep eyes were dark, though
+hazel-dark, not black-dark: whereas her mother's hair had been
+sunny-golden, and her eyes bright (rather shallow) blue, and her skin
+all white and rose.
+
+Her mother had taught school, up in Cheyenne, in Wyoming, and had been
+of a New England family of Puritans. Her father's people had come, long
+ago, from Spain, and he himself had been born near the desert in New
+Mexico: his mother may have been Indian--but a Catholic, anyway.
+
+So, no doubt, was José: though he had little occasion to remember it. It
+was over fifty miles to the nearest church and he had not heard Mass for
+years. He had married his Protestant wife without any dispensation, and
+a judge had married them.
+
+Nevertheless when the child came, he had made the mother understand she
+must be of his Church, and had baptized her himself. When Mariquita was
+ten years old he sent her to the Loretto nuns, out on the heights beyond
+Denver, where she had been confirmed, and made her first Communion, and
+many subsequent Communions.
+
+For five years now she had had to "hear Mass her own way." That is to
+say, she went out upon the prairie, and, in the shade of a tree-clump,
+took her lonely place, crossed herself at the threshold of the shadow,
+and genuflected towards where she believed her old school was, with its
+chapel, and its Tabernacle. Then, out of her book she followed the
+Ordinary of the Mass, projecting herself in mind and fancy into that
+worshipping company, picturing priest and nuns and school-fellows. At
+the _Sanctus_ she rang a sheep-bell, and deepened all her Intention. At
+the Elevation she rang it again, in double triplet, though she could
+elevate only her own solitary soul. At first she had easily pictured all
+her school-fellows in their remembered places--they were all grown up
+and gone away home now. The old priest she had known was dead, as the
+nuns had sent her word, and she had to picture _a_ priest, unknown,
+featureless, instead of him. The nuns' faces had somewhat dimmed in
+distinctness too. But she could picture the large group still. At the
+Communion she always made a Spiritual Communion of her own--that was why
+she always "heard her Mass" early, so as to be fasting.
+
+Once or twice, at long intervals, she had been followed by one of the
+cowboys: but the first one had seen her face as she knelt, and gone
+away, noiselessly, with a shy, red reverence. Her father had seen the
+second making obliquely towards her tree-clump, had overtaken him and
+inquired grimly if he would like a leathering. "When Mariquita's at
+church," said José, "let her be. She's for none of us then."
+
+And they let her be: and her tree-clump became known as Mariquita's
+Church by all the cowboys.
+
+One by one they fell in love with her (her father grimly conscious, but
+unremarking) and one by one they found nothing come of it. Whether he
+would have objected _had_ anything come of it he did not say, though
+several had tried to guess.
+
+To her he never spoke of it, any more than to them: he hardly spoke to
+her of anything except the work--which she did carefully, as if
+carelessly. If she had neglected it, or done it badly, he would have
+rebuked her: that, he considered, was parental duty: as she needed no
+rebuke he said nothing; his ideas of paternal duty were bounded by
+paternal correction and a certain cool watchfulness. His watchfulness
+was not intrusive: he left her chiefly to herself, perceiving her to
+require no guidance. In all her life he never had occasion to complain
+that anything she did was "out of place"--his notion of the severest
+expression of disapproval a father could be called upon to utter.
+
+It was, in his opinion, to be taken for granted that a parent was
+entitled to the affection of his child, and that the child was entitled
+to the affection of her father. He neither displayed his affection nor
+wished Mariquita to display hers. Nor was there in him any sensible
+feeling of love for the girl. Her mother he had loved, and it was a
+relief to him that his daughter was wholly unlike her. It would have
+vexed him had there been any challenging likeness--would have resented
+it as a tacit claim, like a rivalry.
+
+Joaquin was lonelier than Mariquita. He did not like being called "Don
+Joaquin"; he preferred being known by his surname, as "Mr. Xeres." One
+of the cowboys, a very ignorant lad from the East, had supposed
+"Wah-Keen" to be a Chinese name, and confided his idea to the others.
+Don Joaquin had overheard their laughter and been enraged by its cause
+when he had learned it.
+
+He had not married till he was a little over thirty, being already well
+off by then, and he was therefore now past fifty on this afternoon when
+Mariquita came out and stood all alone where the homestead as it were
+rejoined the prairie. At first her long gaze, used to the great
+distances, was turned westward (and south a little) towards where, miles
+upon miles out of sight, lay the Mile High City, and Loretto, and the
+Convent, and all that made her one stock of memories.
+
+The prairie was as empty to such a gaze as so much ocean.
+
+But the sun-stare dazzled her, and she turned eastward; half a mile from
+her, that way, lay the river, showing nothing at this distance: its
+water, not filling at this season a fifth of the space between banks was
+out of sight: the low scrub within its banks was out of sight. Even its
+lips, of precisely even level on either side, were not discernible. But
+where she knew the further lip was, she saw two riders, a man and a
+woman. A moment after she caught sight of them they disappeared--had
+ridden down into the river-bed. The trail had guided them, and they
+could miss neither the way nor the ford.
+
+Nevertheless she walked towards where they were--though her father might
+possibly have thought her doing so out of place.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Up over the sandy river-bed came the two strangers, and Mariquita stood
+awaiting them.
+
+The woman might be thirty, and was, she perceived (to whom a saddle was
+easier than a chair) unused to riding. She was a pretty woman, with a
+sort of foolish amiability of manner that might mean nothing. The man
+was younger--perhaps by three years, and rode as if he had always known
+how to do it, but without being saddle-bred, without living chiefly on
+horseback.
+
+His companion was much aware of his being handsome, but Mariquita did
+not think of that. She, however, liked him immediately--much better than
+she liked the lady. The lady was not, in fact, quite a lady; but the
+young man was a gentleman; and perhaps Mariquita had never known one.
+
+"Is this," inquired the blonde lady--pointing, though inaccurately, as
+if to indicate Mariquita's home, "where Mr. Xeres lives, please?"
+
+She pronounced the X like the x's in Artaxerxes.
+
+"Certainly. He is my father."
+
+"Then your mother is my Aunt Margaret," said the lady in the smart
+clothes that looked so queer on an equestrian.
+
+"My mother unfortunately is dead," Mariquita informed her, with a
+simplicity that made the wide-open blue eyes open wider still, and
+caused their owner to decide that the girl was "awfully Spanish."
+
+Miss Sarah Jackson assumed (with admirable readiness) an expression of
+pathos.
+
+"How very sad! I do apologize," she murmured, as if the decease of her
+aunt were partly her fault.
+
+The young man was amused--not for the first time--by his
+fellow-traveller: but he did not show it.
+
+"You couldn't help it," said Mariquita.
+
+("How very Spanish!" thought her cousin.)
+
+"Of course you did not know," the girl added, "or you would not have
+said anything to hurt me. And my mother's death happened five years
+ago."
+
+"Not _really_!" cried the deceased lady's niece. "How wholly
+unexpected!"
+
+"It wasn't very sudden," Mariquita explained. "She was ill for three
+months."
+
+"My father was quite unaware of it--entirely so. He died, in fact, just
+about that time. And Aunt Margaret and he were (so unfortunately!)
+hardly on terms. Personally I always (though a child) had the strongest
+affection for Aunt Margaret. I took her part about her marriage. Papa's
+_own_ second marriage struck me as less defensible."
+
+"_My_ father only married once," said Mariquita; "he is a widower."
+
+"Oh, quite so! I wish mine had remained so. My stepmother--but we all
+have our faults, no doubt. We did _not_ live agreeably after her third
+marriage--" (Mariquita was getting giddy, and so, perhaps, was Miss
+Jackson's fellow-traveller.)
+
+"I could not, in fact, live," that lady serenely continued, with a smile
+of lingering sweetness, "and finally we differed completely. (Not
+noisily, on my part, nor roughly but irrevocably.) Hence my resolve to
+turn to Aunt Margaret, and my presence here--blood _is_ thicker than
+water, when you come to think of it."
+
+"I met Miss Jackson at ----," her fellow-traveller explained, "and we
+made acquaintance--"
+
+"Introduced by Mrs. Plosher," Miss Jackson put in again with singular
+sweetness. "Mrs. Plosher's boarding-house was recommended to me by two
+ministers. Mr. Gore was likewise her guest, and coming, as she was
+aware, to your father's."
+
+Don Joaquin, besides the regular cowboys, had from time to time taken a
+sort of pupil or apprentice, who paid instead of being paid. Mariquita
+had not been informed that this Mr. Gore was expected.
+
+"So," Mr. Gore added, "I begged Miss Jackson to use one of my horses,
+and I have been her escort."
+
+"So coincidental!" observed that lady, shaking her head slightly.
+"Though really--now I find my aunt no longer presiding here--I
+_really_----"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Don Joaquin expressed no surprise at Mr. Gore's arrival, and no rapture
+at that of Miss Jackson. But he appeared to take it for granted both
+would remain--as they did.
+
+He saw more of the young man than of the young woman, which seemed to
+Mariquita to account for his preferring the latter. _She_ had to see
+more of the lady. Miss Jackson was undeniably pretty, and instantly
+recognized as such by the cowboys: but she "kept her distance," and
+largely ignored their presence--a fact not unobserved by Don Joaquin,
+who inwardly commended her prudence. Of Mr. Gore she took more notice,
+as was natural, owing to their previous acquaintance. She spoke of him,
+however, to her host, as a lad, and hinted that at her age, lads were
+tedious; while frequent in allusion to a certain Eastern friend of hers
+(Mr. Bluck, a man of large means and great capacity) whose married
+daughter was her closest acquaintance.
+
+"Carolina was older than me at school," she would admit, "but she was
+more to my taste than those of my own age. Maturity wins me. Youth is so
+raw!"
+
+"What you call underdone," suggested Don Joaquin, who had talked English
+for forty years, and translated it still, in his mind, into Spanish.
+
+"Just that," Sarah agreed. "You grasp me."
+
+He didn't then, though he would sooner or later, thought the cowboys.
+
+Miss Jackson, then, ignored the cowboys, and gave all the time she could
+spare from herself to Mariquita. When not with Mariquita she was sewing,
+being an indefatigable dressmaker. She called it her "studies."
+
+"It is essential (out here in the wilderness) that I should not neglect
+my studies, and run to seed," she would say, as she smilingly retreated
+into her bedroom, where there were no books.
+
+Mariquita would not have been sorry had she "studied" more. Sarah did
+not fit into her old habits of life, and when they were together
+Mariquita felt lonelier than she had ever done before. Indoors she did
+not find the young woman so incongruous--but when they were out on the
+prairie together the elder girl seemed somehow altogether impossible to
+reconcile with it.
+
+"One might sketch," Miss Jackson would observe. "One _ought_ to keep up
+one's sketching: I feel it to be a duty--don't you?"
+
+"No. I can't sketch. It can't be a duty in my case."
+
+"Ah, but in _mine_! I _know_ I ought. But there's no feature." And she
+slowly waved her parasol round the horizon as though defying a "feature"
+to supervene from any point of the compass.
+
+Though she despised her present neighborhood, Sarah never hinted at any
+intention of leaving it: and it became apparent that her host would not
+have liked her to go away. That her presence was a great thing for
+Mariquita it suited him to assume, but he saw no necessity for
+discussing the matter, nor ascertaining what might in fact be his
+daughter's opinion.
+
+"I think," he said instead, "it will be better we call your cousin
+'Sarella'. It is her name Sarah and Ella. 'Sarella' sounds more
+fitting."
+
+So he and Mariquita thenceforth called her "Sarella."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+Don Joaquin never thought much of Robert Gore; he failed, from the
+first, to "take to him." It had not delighted him that "Sarella" should
+arrive under his escort, though how she could have made her way up from
+Maxwell without him, he did not trouble to discuss with himself. At
+first he had thought it almost inevitable that the young man should make
+those services of his a claim to special intimacy with the lady to whom
+he had accidentally been useful. As it became apparent that Gore made no
+such claim, and was not peculiarly inclined to intimacy with his late
+fellow-traveller, Don Joaquin was half disposed to take umbrage, as
+though the young man were in a manner slighting Miss Jackson--his own
+wife's niece.
+
+As there were only two women about the place, indifference to one of
+them (and that one, in Don Joaquin's opinion, by far the more
+attractive) might be accounted for by some special inclination towards
+the other. Was Gore equally indifferent to Mariquita?
+
+Now, at present, Mariquita's father was not ready to approve any
+advances from the stranger in that direction. He did not feel he knew
+enough about him. That he was sufficiently well off, he thought
+probable; but in that matter he must have certainty. And besides, he
+thought Gore was sure to be a Protestant. Now he had married a
+Protestant himself: and that his wife had been taken from him in her
+youth had been, he had silently decided, Heaven's retribution. Besides,
+a girl was different. A man might do things she might not. _He_ had
+consulted his own will and pleasure only; but Mariquita was not
+therefore free to consult hers. A Catholic girl should give herself only
+to a Catholic man.
+
+That Mariquita and Gore saw little of each other he was pretty sure, but
+it was not possible they should see nothing. And it soon became his
+opinion that, without much personal intercourse, they were interested in
+each other.
+
+Mariquita listened (without often looking at him) when Gore talked, in a
+manner he had never yet observed in her. Gore's extreme deference
+towards the girl, his singular and almost aloof courtesy was, the old
+man conceived, not only breeding and good manners, but the sign of some
+special way in which she had impressed him; as if he had, at sight,
+perceived in her something unrevealed to her father himself. In this, as
+in most things, Don Joaquin was correct in his surmise. He was shrewd in
+surmise to the point almost of cleverness, though by no means an
+infallible judge of character. It did not, however, occur to him that
+the young stranger was right in this fancied perception, that in
+Mariquita there was something higher and finer than anything divined by
+her father, who had never gone beyond admitting that, so far, he had
+perceived in her nothing out of place.
+
+If anything out of place should now appear he would speak; meanwhile he
+remained, as his habit was, silent and watchful; not rendered more
+appreciative of his daughter by the stranger's appreciation, and not
+inclined by that appreciation more favorably to the stranger himself.
+
+That Gore was not warmly welcomed by the cowboys neither surprised nor
+troubled him. There were no quarrels, and that was enough. He did not
+expect them to be delighted by the advent of a foreigner in a position
+not identical with their own. What they did for pay, he paid for being
+taught to do--that was the theory, though in fact Gore did not seem to
+need much teaching. Some, of course, he did need: prairie-lore he could
+not know, however practised he might be as a mere horseman. Don Joaquin
+was chiefly a horse-raiser and dealer, though he dealt also in cattle
+and even in sheep. By this time he had the repute of being wealthy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+It was true that the actual intercourse between Mariquita and her
+father's apprentice or pupil was much less frequent or close than might
+be imagined by anyone strange to the way of life of which they formed
+two units.
+
+At meals they sat at the same table, but during the greater part of
+every day he was out upon the range, and she at home, within the
+homestead, or near it. Yet it was also true that between them there was
+something not existing between either and any other person: a friendship
+mostly silent, an interest not the less real or strong because of the
+silence. To Gore she was a study, of profounder interest than any book
+he knew. To make a counter-study of him would have been alien from
+Mariquita's nature and character; but his presence, which she did not
+ponder, or consider, as he did hers, brought something into her life.
+Perhaps it chiefly made her less lonely by revealing to her how lonely
+she had been. Of his beauty she never thought--never till the end. Of
+hers he thought much less as he became more and more absorbed in
+herself--though its fineness was always more and more clearly perceived
+by him.
+
+On that first afternoon, when he had first seen her, it had instantly
+struck him as possessing a quality of rarity, elusive and never to be
+defined. Miss Jackson's almost gorgeous prettiness, her brilliant
+coloring, her attractive shapeliness, had been hopelessly and finally
+vulgarized by the contrast--as the two young women stood on the level
+lip of the river-course in the unsparing, unflattering light.
+
+That Miss Jackson promptly decided that Mariquita was stupid, he had
+seen plainly; and he had not had the consolation of knowing that she was
+stupid herself. She was, he knew, wise enough in her generation, and by
+no means vacant of will or purpose. But she was, he saw, stupid in
+thinking her young hostess so. Slow, in some senses, Mariquita might be;
+not swift of impression, though tenacious of impression received, nor
+willing to be quick in jumping to shrewd (unflattering) conclusion, yet
+likely to stick hard to an even harsh conclusion once formed.
+
+These, however, were slight matters. What was not slight was the sense
+she gave him of nobility: her simplicity itself noble, her complete
+acquiescence in her own complete ignorance of experience--her innate,
+unargued conviction of the little consequence of much, often highly
+desired, experience.
+
+Of the world she knew nothing, socially, geographically even. Of women
+her knowledge was (as soon he discovered) a mere memory, a memory of a
+group of nuns--for her other companions at the Convent had been
+children. Of men she knew only her father and his cowboys. And no one,
+he perceived, knew her.
+
+But Gore did not believe her mind vacant. That rare quality could not
+have been in her beauty if it had been empty. Yet--there was something
+greater than her mind behind her face. The shape of that perception had
+entered instantly into his own mind; and the perception grew and
+deepened daily, with every time he was in her presence, with every
+recollection of her in absence.
+
+Her mind might be a garden unsown. But behind her face was the light of
+a lamp not waiting to be lit, but already lighted (he surmised) at the
+first coming of conscious existence, and burning steadily ever since.
+Whose hand had lighted it he did not know yet, though he knew that the
+lamp, shining behind her face, her mere beauty, was her soul. Her father
+was not mistaken in his notion that the young man regarded the girl to
+whom he addressed so little of direct speech, with a veneration that
+disconcerted Don Joaquin and was condemned by him as out of place. Not
+that he, of course, found fault with _respect_: absence of that he would
+grimly have resented; but a _culte_, like Gore's, a reverence literally
+devout, seemed to the old half-Indian Latin, high-falutin, unreal: and
+Don Joaquin abhorred unrealities.
+
+Probably the young man condemned the old as hide-bound in obtuseness of
+perception in reference to his daughter. As a jewel of gold in a swine's
+snout she may well have seemed to him. If so, some inkling of the fact
+would surely penetrate the old horse-raiser's inner, taciturn, but
+acutely watchful consciousness. His hide was by no means too thick for
+that. And, if so again, that perception would not enhance his
+appreciation of the critic.
+
+Elderly fathers are not universally more flattered by an exalted
+valuation of their daughters than by an admiring estimation of
+themselves.
+
+To himself, indeed, Gore was perfectly respectful. And he had to admit
+that the stranger learned his work well and did it well--better than the
+cowboys whom Don Joaquin was not given to indulge in neglect or
+slackness.
+
+He had a notion that the cowboys considered Gore too respectable--as to
+which their master held his judgment in suspense. In a possible
+son-in-law respectability, unless quite suspiciously excessive, would
+not be much "out of place"--not that Don Joaquin admitted more than the
+bare possibility, till he had fuller certainty as to the stranger's
+circumstances and antecedents, what he called his "conditions." Given
+satisfactory conditions, Mariquita's father began to be conscious that
+Gore as a possible son-in-law might simplify a certain course of his
+own.
+
+For Sarella continued steadily to commend herself to his ideas. He held
+her to be beautiful in the extreme, and her prudence he secretly
+acclaimed as admirable. That she was penniless he was quite aware, and
+he had a constant, sincere affection for money; but, unless penniless,
+such a lovely creature could hardly have been found on the prairie, or
+be expected to remain there; an elderly rich husband, he considered,
+would have much more hold on a young and lovely wife if she _were_
+penniless.
+
+That the young woman had expensive tastes he did not suppose, and he had
+great and not ungrounded confidence in his own power of repression of
+any taste not to his mind, should any supervene.
+
+Don Joaquin had two reasons for surveying with conditional approval the
+idea of marrying Sarella--when he should have made up his mind, which he
+had not yet done. One was to please himself: the other was in order that
+he might have a son. Mariquita's sex had always been against her. Before
+her arrival he had decided that his child must be a boy, and her being a
+girl was out of place. He disliked making money for some other man's
+wife.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+Jack did not like Sarella, and so it was fortunate for that young person
+that Jack's opinion was of no sort of consequence. He had been longer on
+the range than anyone there except Don Joaquin, and he did much that
+would, if he had been a different sort of man, have entitled him to
+consider himself foreman. But he received smaller wages than anyone and
+never dreamt of being foreman. He was believed never to have had any
+other name but Jack, and was known never to have had but one suit of
+clothes, and his face and hands were much shabbier than his clothes,
+owing to a calendar of personal accidents. "That happened," he would
+say, "in the year the red bull horned my eye out," or "I mind--'twas in
+the Jenoorey that my leg got smashed thro' Black Peter rollin' on
+me...." He had been struck in the jaw by a splinter from a tree that had
+itself been struck by lightning, and the scar he called his "June
+mark." A missing finger of his right hand he called his Xmas mark
+because it was on Christmas Day that the gun burst which shot it off.
+These, and many other scars and blemishes, would have marred the beauty
+of an Antinoüs, and Jack had always been ugly.
+
+But, shabby as he was, he was marvellously clean, and Mariquita was very
+fond of him. His crooked body held a straight heart, loyal and kind, and
+a child's mind could not be cleaner. No human being suspected that Jack
+hated his master, whom he served faithfully and with stingily rewarded
+toil: and he hated him not because he was stingy to himself, but because
+Jack adored Mariquita, and accused her father of indifference to her. He
+was angry with him for leaving her alone to do all the work, and angry
+because nothing was ever done for her, and no thought taken of her.
+
+When Sarella and Gore came, Jack hoped that the young man would marry
+Mariquita and take her away--though _he_ would be left desolate. Thus
+Mariquita would be happy--and her father be punished, for Jack clearly
+perceived that Don Joaquin did not care for Gore, and he did _not_
+perceive that Mariquita's departure might be convenient to her father.
+But Jack could not see that Gore himself did much to carry out that
+marriage scheme. That the young man set a far higher value on Mariquita
+than her father had ever done, Jack did promptly understand; but he
+could perceive no advances and watched him with impatience.
+
+As for Sarella, Jack was jealous of her importance: jealous that the old
+man made more of his wife's niece than of his own daughter; jealous that
+she had much less to do, and specially jealous that she had much smarter
+clothes. Jack could not see Sarella's beauty; had he possessed a
+looking-glass it might have been supposed to have dislocated his eye for
+beauty, but he possessed none--and he thought Mariquita as beautiful as
+the dawn on the prairie.
+
+To do her justice, Sarella was civil to the battered old fellow, but he
+didn't want her civility, and was ungrateful for it. Yet her civility
+was to prove useful. Jack lived in a shed at the end of the stables,
+where he ate and slept, and mended his clothes sitting up in bed, and
+wearing (then only) a large pair of spectacles, though half a pair would
+have been enough. He cooked his own food, though Mariquita would have
+cooked it for him if he would have let her.
+
+Sarella loved good eating, and on her coming it irritated her to see so
+much excellent food "made so little of." Presently she gave specimens of
+her own superior science, and Don Joaquin approved, as did the cowboys.
+
+"Jack," she said to him one day, "do you ever eat anything but stew from
+year's end to year's end?"
+
+"I eats bread, too, and likewise corn porridge," Jack replied coldly.
+
+"I could tell you how to make more of your meat--I should think you'd
+sicken of stew everlastingly."
+
+"There's worse than stew," he suggested.
+
+"_I_ don't know what's worse, then," the young lady retorted, wrinkling
+her very pretty nose.
+
+"None. That's worse," said Jack, triumphantly.
+
+"It seems to me," Sarella observed thoughtfully, "as if you're growing a
+bit oldish to do for yourself, and have no one to do anything for you.
+An elderly man wants a woman to keep him comfortable."
+
+Jack snorted, but Sarella, undefeated, proceeded to put the case of his
+being ill. Who would nurse him?
+
+"Ill! I've too much to do for sech idleness. The Boss'd stare if I laid
+out to get ill."
+
+"Illness," Sarella remarked piously, "comes from Above, and may come any
+day. Haven't you anyone belonging to you, Jack? No sister, no niece; you
+never were married, I suppose, so I don't mention a daughter."
+
+"I _was_ married, though," Jack explained, much delighted, "and had a
+daughter, too."
+
+"You quite surprise me!" cried Sarella, "quite!"
+
+"She didn't marry me for my looks, my wife didn't," chuckled Jack. "Nor
+yet for my money."
+
+"Out of esteem?" suggested Sarella.
+
+"Can't say, I'm sure. I never heerd her mention it. Anyway, it didn't
+last--"
+
+"The esteem?"
+
+"No. The firm. She died--when Ginger was born. Since which I have
+remained a bachelord."
+
+"By Ginger you mean your daughter?"
+
+"That's what they called her. Her aunt took her, and _she_ took the
+smallpox. But she didn't die of it. She's alive now."
+
+"Married, I daresay?"
+
+"No. Single. She's as like me as you're not," Jack explained summarily.
+
+Sarella laughed.
+
+"A good girl, though, I'll be bound," she hinted amiably.
+
+"She's never mentioned the contrary--in her letters."
+
+"Oh, she writes! I'm glad she writes."
+
+"Thank you, Miss Sarella. She writes most Christmasses. And she wrote
+lately, tho' it's not Christmas."
+
+"Not ill, I hope?"
+
+"Ill! She's an industrious girl with plenty o' sense ... but her aunt's
+dead, and she thinks o' taking a place in a boarding-house."
+
+"Jack," said Sarella, after a brief but pregnant pause of consideration,
+"bring her up here."
+
+Jack regarded her with a stare of undisguised amazement.
+
+"Why not?" Sarella persisted. "It would be better for you."
+
+"What's that to do with it?"
+
+"And better for Miss Mariquita. It's too much for Miss Mariquita--all
+the work she has to do."
+
+"That's true anyway."
+
+"Of course it's true. Anyone can see that." (That Sarella saw it,
+considerably surprised Jack, and provided matter for some close
+consideration subsequently.)
+
+"Look here, Jack," she went on, "I'll tell you what. You go to Mr. Xeres
+and say you'd like your daughter to come and work for you...."
+
+"And he'd tell me to go and be damned."
+
+"But you'd not go. And he wouldn't want you to go. And _I'll_ speak to
+him."
+
+Jack stared again. He hardly realized yet how much steadily growing
+confidence in her influence with "the Boss" Sarella felt. He made no
+promise to speak to him: but said "he'd sleep on it."
+
+With that sleep came a certain ray of comprehension. Miss Sarella was
+not thinking entirely of him and his loneliness, nor entirely of Miss
+Mariquita. He believed that she really expected the Boss would marry her
+(as all the cowboys had believed for some weeks) and he perceived, with
+some involuntary admiration of her shrewdness, that she had no idea of
+being left, if Miss Mariquita should marry and go away, to do all the
+work as she had done. Once arrived at this perception of the situation,
+Jack went ahead confident of Sarella's quietly persistent help. He had
+not the least dread of rough language. He had no sensitive dread of
+displeasing his master. He would like to have Ginger up at the range
+especially as Ginger's coming would take much of the work off Miss
+Mariquita's hands. He even made Don Joaquin suspect that if Ginger were
+not allowed to come he, Jack, would go, and make a home for her down in
+Maxwell.
+
+It did not suit Don Joaquin to lose Jack, and it suited him very well to
+listen to Sarella.
+
+So Ginger came, and proved, as all the cowboys agreed, a good sort,
+though quite as ugly as her father.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+"Mariquita," said her father one day, "does Sarella ever talk to you
+about religion?"
+
+Anything like what could be called a conversation was so rare between
+them that the girl was surprised, and it surprised her still more that
+he should choose that particular subject.
+
+"She asked me if we were Catholics."
+
+"Of course we are Catholics. You said so?"
+
+"I didn't say 'of course,' but I said we were. She then asked if my
+mother had become one--on her marriage or afterwards."
+
+Don Joaquin heard this with evident interest, and, as Mariquita thought,
+with some satisfaction.
+
+"What did you say?" he inquired.
+
+Mariquita glanced at him as if puzzled. "I told her that my mother
+never became a Catholic," she answered.
+
+"That pleased her?"
+
+"I don't know. She did not seem pleased or displeased."
+
+"She did not seem glad that I had not insisted that my wife should be
+Catholic?"
+
+"She may have been glad--I did not see that she was."
+
+"You did not think she would have been angry if she had heard I had
+insisted that my wife should be Catholic?"
+
+"No; that did not appear to me."
+
+So far as Mariquita's information went, it satisfied her father. Only it
+was a pity Sarella should know that her aunt had not adopted his own
+religion.
+
+Mariquita had not probed the motive of his questions. Direct enough of
+_impression_, she was not penetrating nor astute in following the hidden
+working of other persons' minds.
+
+"It is," he remarked, "a good thing Sarella came here."
+
+"Poor thing! She had no home left--it was natural she should think of
+coming to her aunt."
+
+"Yes, quite natural. And good for you also."
+
+"I was not lonely before--"
+
+"But if I had died?"
+
+Mariquita had never thought of his dying; he was as strong as a tree,
+and she could not picture the range without him.
+
+"I never thought of you dying. You are not old, father."
+
+"Old, no! But suppose I had died, all the same--before Sarella
+came--what would you have done?"
+
+"I never thought of it."
+
+"No. That would have been out of place. But you could not have lived
+here, one girl all alone among all the men."
+
+"No, of course."
+
+"Now you have Sarella. It would be different."
+
+"Oh, yes; if she wished to go on living here--"
+
+"If she went away to live somewhere else you could go with her."
+
+Mariquita did not see that that would be necessary, but she did not say
+so. She was not aware that her father was endeavoring to habituate her
+mind to the permanence of Sarella's connection with herself.
+
+"Of course," he said casually, "you might marry--at any time."
+
+"I never thought of that," the girl answered, and he saw clearly that
+she never _had_ thought of it. Gore would, he perceived, not have her
+for the asking; might have a great deal of asking to do, and might not
+succeed after much asking.
+
+It was not so clear to him that Gore himself was as well aware of that
+as he was.
+
+That she had never had any thoughts of marriage pleased him, partly
+because he would not have liked Gore to get what he wanted, so easily,
+and partly because it satisfied his notion of dignity in her--his
+daughter. It was really his own dignity in her he was thinking of.
+
+All the same, now that he knew she was not thinking of marrying the
+handsome stranger, he felt more clearly that (if Gore's "conditions"
+were suitable) the marriage might suit him--Don Joaquin.
+
+"There are," he observed sententiously, "only two ways for women."
+
+"Two ways?"
+
+"Marriage is the usual way. If God had wanted only nuns, He would have
+created women only. That one sees. Whereas there are women and men--so
+marriage is the ordinary way for women; and if God chooses there should
+be more married women than nuns, it shows He doesn't want too many
+nuns."
+
+The argument was new to Mariquita: she was little used to hear _any_
+abstract discussion from her father.
+
+"You have thought of it," she said; "I have never thought of all that."
+
+"There was no necessity. It might have been out of place. All the same
+it is true what I say."
+
+"But I think it is also true that to be a nun is the best way for some
+women."
+
+"Naturally. For some."
+
+Mariquita had no sort of desire to argue with him, or anyone; arguments
+were, she thought, almost quarrels.
+
+He, on his side, was again thinking of Sarella, and left the nuns
+alone.
+
+"It would," he said, "be a good thing if Sarella should become Catholic.
+If she talks about religion you can explain to her that there can be
+only one that is true."
+
+Mariquita did not understand (though everyone else did) that her father
+wished to marry Sarella, and, of course, she could not know that he was
+resolved against provoking further punishment by marrying a Protestant.
+
+"If I can," she said, slowly, "I will try to help her to see that. She
+does not talk much about such things. And she is much older than I am--"
+
+"Oh, yes; quite very much older," he agreed earnestly, though in fact
+Sarella appeared simply a girl to him.
+
+"And it would not do good for me to seem interfering."
+
+"But," he agreed with some adroitness, "though a blind person were older
+than you (who can see) you would show her the way?"
+
+Mariquita was not, at any rate, so blind as to be unable to see that her
+father was strongly desirous that Sarella should be a Catholic. It had
+surprised her, as she had no recollection of his having troubled himself
+concerning her own mother, his beloved wife, not having been one. Of
+course, she was glad, thinking it meant a deeper interest in religion on
+his own part.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+Between Mariquita and her father there was little in common except a
+partial community of race; in nature and character they were entirely
+different. In her the Indian strain had only physical expression, and
+that only in the slim suppleness of her frame; she would never grow
+stout as do so many Spanish women.
+
+Whereas in her father the Indian blood had effects of character. He was
+not merely subtle like a Latin, but had besides the craft and cunning of
+an Indian. Yet the cunning seemed only an intensification of the
+subtlety, a deeper degree of the same quality and not an added separate
+quality. In fact, in him, as in many with the same mixture of race, the
+Indian strain and the Spanish were really mingled, not merely joined in
+one individual.
+
+Mariquita had, after all, only one quarter Spanish, and one Indian;
+whereas with him it was a quarter of half and half. She had, in actual
+blood, a whole half that was pure Saxon, for her mother's New England
+family was of pure English descent. Yet Mariquita seemed far more purely
+Spanish than her father; he himself could trace nothing of her mother in
+her, and in her character was nothing Indian but her patience.
+
+From her mother personally she inherited nothing, but through her mother
+she had certain characteristics that helped to make her very
+incomprehensible to Don Joaquin, though he did not know it.
+
+Gore, who studied her with far more care and interest, because to him
+she seemed deeply worth study, did not himself feel compelled to
+remember her triple strain of race. For to him she seemed splendidly,
+adorably simple. He was far from falling into Sarella's shallow mistake
+of calling that simplicity "stupidity"; to him it appeared a sublimation
+of purity, rarely noble and fine. That she was book-ignorant he knew, as
+well as that she was life-ignorant; but he did not think her
+intellectually narrow, even intellectually fallow. Along what roads her
+mind moved he could not, by mere study of her, discover; yet he was sure
+it did not stagnate without motion or life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+About a month after the arrival of Sarella, one Saturday night at
+supper, that young person observed that Mr. Gore's place was vacant.
+
+Mariquita must equally have noted the fact, but she had said nothing.
+
+"Isn't Mr. Gore coming to his supper?" Sarella asked her.
+
+Don Joaquin thought this out of place. His daughter's silence on the
+subject had pleased him better.
+
+"I don't know," Mariquita answered, glancing towards her father.
+
+"No," he said; "he has ridden down to Maxwell."
+
+Sometimes one or other of the cowboys would ride down to Maxwell, and
+reappear, without question or remark.
+
+"I wonder he did not mention he was going," Sarella complained.
+
+"Of course he mentioned it," Don Joaquin said loudly. "He would not go
+without asking me."
+
+"But to us ladies," Sarella persisted, "it would have been better
+manners."
+
+"That was not at all necessary," said Don Joaquin; "Mariquita would not
+expect it."
+
+"_I_ would, though. It ought to have struck him that one might have a
+communication for him. I should have had commissions for him."
+
+It was evident that Sarella had ruffled Don Joaquin, and it was the
+first time anyone had seen him annoyed by her.
+
+Next day, after the midday meal, Sarella followed Mariquita out of
+doors, and said to her, yawning and laughing.
+
+"Don't you miss Mr. Gore?"
+
+Mariquita answered at once and quite simply:
+
+"Miss him? He was never here till a month ago--"
+
+"Nor was I," Sarella interrupted pouting prettily. "But you'd miss me,
+now."
+
+"Only you're not going away."
+
+"You take it for granted I shall stop, then?" (And Sarella looked
+complacent.) "That I'm a fixture."
+
+"I never thought of your going away," Mariquita answered, with a formula
+rather habitual to her. "Where would you go?"
+
+"I should decide on that when I decided to go." Sarella declared
+oracularly. But Mariquita took it with irritating calmness.
+
+"I don't believe you will decide to go," she said with that gravity and
+plainness of hers that often irritated Sarella--who liked _badinage_.
+"It would be useless."
+
+"Suppose," Sarella suggested, pinching the younger girl's arm playfully,
+"suppose I were to think of getting married. Shouldn't I have to go
+then?"
+
+"I never thought of that--" Mariquita was beginning, but Sarella pinched
+and interrupted her.
+
+"Do you _ever_ think of anything?" she complained sharply.
+
+"Oh, yes, often, of many things."
+
+"What things on earth?" (with sudden inquisitive eagerness.)
+
+"Just my own sort of things," Mariquita answered, without saying whether
+"her things" were on earth at all. Sarella pouted again.
+
+"You're not very confidential to a person."
+
+Mariquita weighed the accusation. "Perhaps," she said quietly, "I am not
+much used to persons. Since I came home from the convent there was no
+other girl here till you came."
+
+"So you're sorry I came!"
+
+"No; glad. I am glad you did that. It is a home for you. And I am sure
+my father is glad."
+
+"You think he likes my being here?" And Sarella listened attentively for
+the answer.
+
+"Of course. You must see it."
+
+"You think he does not dislike me? He was cross with me last night."
+
+"He did not like you noticing Mr. Gore was away--"
+
+"Of course I noticed it--surely, he could not be jealous of that!"
+
+"I should not think he could be jealous," Mariquita agreed, too readily
+to please Sarella. "But I did not think of it. I am sure he does not
+dislike you. You cannot think he does."
+
+Sarella was far from thinking it. But she had wanted Mariquita to say
+more, and was only partly satisfied.
+
+"_He_ would not like me to go away?" she suggested.
+
+"Oh, no. The contrary."
+
+"Not even if it were advantageous to me?"
+
+"How advantageous?"
+
+"If I were to be going to a home of my own? Going, for instance, to be
+married?"
+
+"That would surprise him...."
+
+Sarella was not pleased at this.
+
+"Surprise him! Why should it surprise him that anyone should marry me?"
+
+"There is no reason. Only, he does not imagine that there _is_ someone.
+If there is someone, he would suppose you had not been willing to marry
+him by your coming here instead."
+
+("Is she stupid or cautious?" Sarella asked herself. "She will say
+nothing.")
+
+Mariquita was neither cautious nor stupid. She was only ignorant of
+Sarella's purpose, and by no means awake to her father's.
+
+"It is terribly hot out here," Sarella grumbled, "and there is such a
+glare. I shall go in and study."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+Mariquita did not go in too. She did not find it hot, nor did the glare
+trouble her. The air was full of life and vigor, and she had no sense of
+lassitude. There was, indeed, a breeze from the far-off Rockies, and to
+her it seemed cool enough, though the sun was so nearly directly
+overhead that her figure cast only a very stunted shadow of herself. In
+the long grass the breeze made a slight rustle, but there was no other
+sound.
+
+Mariquita did not want to be indoors; outside, here on the tilted
+prairie, she was alone and not lonely. The tilt of the vast space around
+her showed chiefly in this--that eastward the horizon was visibly lower
+than at the western rim of the prairie. The prairie was not really flat;
+between her and both horizons there lay undulations, those between her
+and the western rising into _mesas_, which, with a haze so light as only
+to tell in the great distance, hid the distant barrier of the Rocky
+Mountains, whose foothills even were beyond the frontiers of this State.
+
+She knew well where they were, though, and knew almost exactly beyond
+which point of the far horizon lay Loretto Heights, beyond Denver, and
+the Convent.
+
+Somehow the coming of these two new units to the range-life had pushed
+the Convent farther away still. But Mariquita's thoughts never rested in
+the mere memories hanging like a slowly fading arras around that
+long-concluded convent life. What it had given her was more than the
+memories and was hers still.
+
+As to the mere memories, she knew that with slow but increasing pace
+they were receding from her, till on time's horizon they would end in a
+haze, golden but vague and formless. Voices once clearly recalled were
+losing tone; faces, whose features had once risen before the eye of
+memory with little less distinctness than that with which she had seen
+them when physically present, arose now blurred like faces passing a
+fog. Even their individuality, depending less on feature than
+expression, was no longer easily recoverable.
+
+She had been used to remember this and that nun by her very footsteps;
+now the nuns moved, a mere group in one costume, soundlessly, with no
+footstep at all.
+
+Of this gradual loss of what had been almost her only private possession
+she made no inward wishful complaint; Mariquita was not morbid, nor
+melancholy. The operation of a natural law of life could not fill her
+with the poet's rebellious outcry. To all law indeed she yielded without
+protest, whether it implied submission without inward revolt to the mere
+shackles of circumstance, or submission to her father's dominance; for
+it was not in her fashion of mind to form hypothesis--such hypothesis,
+for instance, as that of her father calling upon her to take some course
+opposed to conscience. Though her gaze was turned towards the point of
+the horizon under which the Convent and its intimates were, it was not
+simply to dream of them that she yielded herself.
+
+All that life had had a centre--not for herself only, but for all there.
+The simplicity of the life consisted, above all, in the simplicity of
+its object. Its routine, almost mechanically regular, was not mechanical
+because of its central meaning. No doubt the "work" of the nuns was
+education, but their work of education was service of a Master. And the
+Master was Himself the real object, the centre of the work, as carried
+on within those quiet, busy walls. Mariquita no longer formed a part,
+though the work was still operative in her, and had not ceased with her
+removal from the workers; but she was as near as ever to its centre, and
+was now more concerned with the ultimate object of the work than with
+the work.
+
+Her memories were weakening in color and definiteness, but her
+possession was not decreased, her possession was the Master who
+possessed herself.
+
+The simplicity that Gore had from the first noted in her, without being
+able to inform himself wherein it consisted--but which he venerated
+without knowing its source, that he knew was noble--was first that
+Mariquita did in fact live and move and have her being, as nominally all
+His creatures do, in the Master of that vanished convent life. What the
+prairie was to her body, surrounding it, its sole background and scene
+and stage of action, He was to her inward, very vivid, wholly silent
+life; what the prairie was to her healthy lungs, He was to her soul, its
+breath, "inspiration." Banal and stale as such metaphor is, in her the
+two lives were so unified (in this was the rarity of her "simplicity")
+that it was at least completely accurate.
+
+With Mariquita that which we call the supernatural life was not
+occasional and spasmodic. That inspiration of Our Lord was not, as with
+so many, a gulp, or periodic series of gulps, but a breathing as steady
+and soundless as the natural breathing of her strong, sane, flawless
+body.
+
+She did not, like the self-conscious pietist, listen to it. She did not,
+like the pathological pietist, test its pulse or temperature. The
+pathological pietist is still self-student, though studious of self in a
+new relation; still breathes her own breath at second-hand, and remains
+indoors within the four walls of herself.
+
+Of herself Mariquita knew little. That God had given her, in truth,
+existence; that she knew. That _she_ was, because He chose. That He had
+been born, and died, and lived again, for her sake, as much as for the
+sake of any one of all the saints, though not more than for the sake of
+the human being in all the world who thought least of Him: that she
+knew. That He loved her incomparably better than she could love herself
+or any other person--that she knew with a reality of knowledge greater
+than that with which any lover ever knows himself beloved by the lover
+who would give and lose everything for him. That He had already set in
+her another treasure, the capacity of loving Him--that also she knew
+with ineffable reverence and gladness, and that the power of loving Him
+grew in her, as the power of knowing Him grew.
+
+But concerning herself Mariquita knew little except such things as
+these. She had studied neither her own capacities nor her own
+limitations, neither her tastes, nor her gifts. That Sarella thought
+her stupid, she was hardly aware, and less than half aware that Sarella
+was wrong. No human creature had ever told her that she was beautiful,
+and she had never made any guess on the subject with herself. She never
+wondered if she were happy, or ever unjustly disinherited of the means
+of happiness. Whether, in less strait thrall of circumstance, she might
+be of more consequence, even of more use, she never debated. She had not
+dreamed of being heroic; had no chafing at absence of either sphere or
+capacity for being brilliant. Her life was passing in a silence
+singularly profound among the lives of God's other human creatures, and
+its silence, unhumanness, oblivion (that deepest of oblivion lying
+beneath what _has_ been known though forgotten) did not vex her, and was
+never thought of. Her duties were coarse and common; but they were those
+God had set in her way and sight, and she had no impatience of them, no
+scorn for them, but just did them. They were not more coarse or common
+than those He had himself found to His hand, and done, in the house at
+Nazareth where Joseph was master, and, after Joseph, Mary was mistress,
+and He, their Creator, third, to obey and serve them.
+
+It would be greatly unjust to Mariquita to say that the monotone of her
+life was made golden by the bright haze in which it moved. She lived not
+in a dream, but in an atmosphere. She was not a dreamy person, moving
+through realities without consciousness of them. She saw all around her,
+with living interest, only she saw beyond them with interest deeper
+still, or rather their own significance for her was made deeper by her
+sense of what was beyond them, and to which they, like herself,
+belonged. She was very conscious of her neighbors, not only of the human
+neighbors, but also of the live creatures not human; and each of these
+had, in her reverence, a definite sacredness as coming like herself from
+the hand of God.
+
+There was nothing pantheistic in this; seeing everything as God's she
+did not see it itself Divine, but every natural object was to her clear
+vision but a thread in the clear, transparent veil through which God
+showed Himself everywhere. When St. Francis "preached to the birds" he
+was in fact listening to their sermon to him; and Mariquita, in her
+close neighborly friendship with the small wild creatures of the
+prairie, was only worshipping the ineffable, kind friendliness of God,
+who had made, and who fed, them also. The love she gave them was only
+one of the myriad silent expressions of her love for Him, who loved
+them. They were easier and simpler to understand than her human
+neighbors. It was not that, for an instant, she thought them on the same
+plane of interest--but we must here interrupt ourselves as she was
+interrupted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+Mariquita had been alone a long time when Gore, riding home, came
+suddenly upon her.
+
+She was sitting where a clump of trees cast now a shadow, and it was
+only in coming round them that he saw her when already very near her.
+The ground was soft there, and his horse's hoofs had made scarcely any
+sound.
+
+She turned her head, and he saluted her, at the same moment slipping
+from the saddle.
+
+"I thought you were far away," she said.
+
+"I have been far away--at Maxwell. It has been a long ride."
+
+"Yes, that is a long way," she said. "But I never go there."
+
+"No? I went to hear Mass."
+
+She was surprised, never having thought that he was a Catholic.
+
+"I did not know you were a Catholic," she told him.
+
+"No wonder! I have been here a month and never been to Mass before."
+
+"It is so far. I never go."
+
+"You _are_ a Catholic, then?"
+
+"Oh, yes; I think all Spaniards are Catholics."
+
+"But not all Americans," Gore suggested smiling.
+
+"No. And of course, we are Americans, my father and I."
+
+"Exactly. No doubt I knew your names, both surname and Christian name,
+were Spanish, and I supposed you were of Catholic descent--"
+
+"Only," she interrupted with a quiet matter-of-factness, "you saw we
+never went to Mass."
+
+"Perhaps a priest comes here sometimes and gives you Mass."
+
+"No, never. If it were not so very far, I suppose my father would let me
+ride down to Maxwell occasionally, at all events. But he would not let
+me go alone, and none of the men are Catholics; besides, he would not
+wish me to go with one of them; and then it would be necessary to go
+down on Saturday and sleep there. Of course, he would not permit that.
+But," and she did not smile as she said this, "it must seem strange to
+you, who are a Catholic, to think that I, who am one also, should never
+hear Mass. Since I left the Convent and came home I do not hear it. That
+may scandalize you."
+
+"I shall never be scandalized by you," he answered, also without
+smiling.
+
+"That is best," she said. "It is generally foolish to be scandalized,
+because we can know so little about each other's case."
+
+She paused a moment, and he thought how little need she could ever have
+of any charitable suspension of judgment. He knew well enough by
+instinct, that this inability to hear Mass must be the great
+disinheritance of her life here on the prairie, her submission to it,
+her great obedience.
+
+"But," she went on earnestly, "I hope you will not take any scandal at
+my father either--from my saying that he would not permit my going down
+to Maxwell and staying there all night on Saturday so as to hear Mass
+on Sunday morning. (There is, you know, only one Mass there, and that
+very early, because the priest has to go far into the county on the
+other side of Maxwell to give another Mass.) We know no family down
+there with whom I could stay. He would think it impossible I should stay
+with strange people--or in an hotel. Our Spanish ideas would forbid
+that."
+
+"Oh, yes; I can fully understand. You need not fear my being so stupid
+as to take scandal. I have all my life had enough to do being
+scandalized at myself."
+
+"Ah, yes! That is so. One finds that always. Only one knows that God is
+more indulgent to one's faults than one has learned to be oneself; that
+patience comes so very slowly, and slower still the humility that would
+teach one to be never surprised at any fault in oneself."
+
+Gore reverenced her too truly to say, "Any fault would surprise _me_ in
+you." He only assented to her words, as if they were plain and cold
+matter-of-fact, and let her go on, for he knew she had more to say.
+
+"I would like," she told him, "to finish about my father. Because to
+you he may seem just careless. You may think, 'But why should not _he_
+take her down to Maxwell and hear Mass himself also?' Coming from the
+usual life of Catholics to this life of ours on the prairies, it may
+easily occur to you like that. You cannot possibly know--as if you had
+read it in a book--a man's life like my father's. He was born far away
+from here, out in the desert--in New Mexico. His father baptized
+him--just as _he_ baptized me. There was no priest. There was no Mass.
+How could he learn to think it a necessary part of life? no one can
+learn to think necessary what is impossible. From that desert he came to
+this wilderness; very different, but just as empty. No Mass here either,
+no priest. How could he be expected to think it necessary to ride far,
+far away to find Mass? It would be to him like riding away to find a
+picture gallery. He _couldn't_ be away every Saturday and Sunday. That
+would not be possible; and what is not possible is no sin. And what is
+no sin on three Sundays out of four, or one Sunday out of two, how
+should it seem a sin on the other Sunday? I hope you will understand
+all that."
+
+"Indeed, yes! I hope you do not think I have been judging your father!
+That would be a great impertinence."
+
+"Towards God--yes. That is His business, and no one else understands it
+at all. No, I did not think you would have been judging. Only I thought
+you might be troubled a little. It is a great loss, my father's and
+mine, that we live out here where there is no Mass, and where there are
+no Sacraments. But Our Lord does the same things differently. It is not
+hard for Him to make up losses."
+
+One thing which struck the girl's hearer was that the grave simplicity
+of her tones was never sad. It seemed to him the perfection of
+obedience.
+
+"My father," she went on, "is very good. He always tells the truth.
+Those who deal in horses are said to tell many lies about them. He never
+does. He is very just--to the men, and everybody. And he does not grind
+them, nor does he insult them in reproof. He hates laziness and
+stupidity, and will not suffer either. Yet he does not gibe in finding
+fault nor say things, being master, to which they being servants may not
+retort. That makes fault-finding bitter and intolerable. He works very
+hard and takes no pleasure. He greatly loved my mother, and was in all
+things a true husband. That was a great burden God laid on him--the loss
+of her, but he carried it always in silence. You can hardly know all
+these things."
+
+Gore saw that she was more observant than he had fancied--that she had
+been conscious of criticism in him of her father, and was earnest in
+exacting justice for him.
+
+"But," he said, "I shall not forget them now."
+
+"I shall thank you for that," she told him, beginning to move forward
+towards the homestead that was full in sight, half a mile away. "And it
+will be getting very late. Tea is much later on Sunday, for the men like
+to sleep, but it will be time now."
+
+They walked on together, side by side, he leading his horse by the
+bridle hung loosely over his shoulder. The horse after its very long
+journey of to-day and yesterday was tired out, and only too willing to
+go straight to his stable.
+
+They did not now talk much. Don Joaquin, watching them as they came from
+the house door, saw that.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+"Mr. Gore came back with you," he said to Mariquita as she joined him.
+Gore had gone round to the stables with his horse.
+
+"Yes. As he came back from Maxwell he passed the place where I was
+sitting, and we came on together--after talking for a time."
+
+Mariquita did not think her father was cross-examining her. Nor was he.
+He was not given to inquisitiveness, and seldom scrutinized her doings.
+
+"Mr. Gore," she continued, "went to Maxwell for the sake of going to
+Mass."
+
+"So he is a Catholic!" And Mariquita observed with pleasure that her
+father spoke in a tone of satisfaction. He had never before appeared to
+be in the least concerned with the religion of any of the men about the
+place.
+
+That night, after Sarella and Mariquita had gone to bed, Don Joaquin
+had another satisfaction. He and Gore were alone, smoking; all the large
+party ate together, but the cowboys went off to their own quarters after
+meals. Only Don Joaquin, his daughter, Sarella and Gore slept in the
+dwelling-house. So high up above sea-level, it was cold enough at night,
+and the log fire was pleasant.
+
+What gave him satisfaction was that Gore asked him about the price of a
+range, and whether a suitable one was to be had anywhere near.
+
+"It would not be," Don Joaquin bade him note, "the price of the range
+only. Without some capital it would be throwing money away to buy one."
+
+"Of course. What would range and stock and all cost?"
+
+"That would depend on the size of the range, and the amount of stock it
+would bear. And also on whether the range were very far out, like this
+one. If it were near a town and the railway, it would cost more to buy."
+
+Gore quite understood that, and Don Joaquin spoke of "Blaine's" range.
+"It lies nearer Maxwell than this. But it is not so large, and Blaine
+has never made much of it--he had not capital enough to put on it the
+stock it should have had, and he was never the right man. A townsman in
+all his bones, and his wife towny too. And their girls worse. He _wants_
+to clear. He will never do good there."
+
+The two men discussed the matter at some length. It seemed to the elder
+of them that Gore would seriously entertain the plan, and had the money
+for the purchase.
+
+"I have thought sometimes," said Joaquin, "of buying Blaine's myself."
+
+"Of course, I would not think of it if you wanted it. I would not even
+make any inquiry--that would be sending the price up."
+
+"Yes. But, if you decide to go in for it, I shall not mind. I have land
+enough and stock enough, and work enough. I should have bought it if I
+had a son growing up."
+
+It was satisfactory to Don Joaquin to find that Gore could buy a large
+range and afford capital to stock it. If he went on with such a purchase
+it would prove him "substantial as to conditions." And he was a
+Catholic, also a good thing.
+
+Only Sarella should be a Catholic also. "So you went down to Maxwell to
+go to Mass," he said, just as they were putting out their pipes to go to
+bed. "That was not out of place. Perhaps one Saturday we may go down
+together."
+
+Gore said, of course, that he would be glad of his company.
+
+"It would not be myself only," Don Joaquin explained; "I should take my
+daughter and her cousin."
+
+When Gore had an opportunity of telling this to Mariquita she was full
+of gladness.
+
+"See," she said, "how strong good example is!"
+
+"Is your cousin, then, also a Catholic?" he asked, surprised without
+knowing why.
+
+"Oh, no! My father regrets it, and would like her to be one. That shows
+he thinks of religion more than you might have guessed."
+
+Gore thought that it showed something else as well. It did not, however,
+seem to have occurred to Mariquita that her father wanted to marry her
+cousin.
+
+Sarella strongly approved the idea of going down, all four of them
+together, to Maxwell some Saturday.
+
+"Of course," she said, "it would be for two nights, at least. He
+couldn't expect _us_ to ride back on the Sunday. It will be a treat--we
+must insist on starting early enough to get down there before the shops
+shut. I daresay there will be a theatre."
+
+Mariquita, suddenly, after five years, promised the chance of hearing
+Mass and going to Holy Communion, was not surprised that Sarella should
+only think of it as an outing; she was not a Catholic. But she thought
+it as well to give Sarella a hint.
+
+"I expect," she said, "father will be hoping that you would come to Mass
+with us."
+
+"I? Do you think that? He knows I am not a Catholic--why should he
+care?"
+
+"Oh, he would care. I am sure of that."
+
+Sarella laughed.
+
+"You sly puss! I believe you want to convert me," she said, shaking her
+head jocularly at Mariquita.
+
+"Of course I should be glad if you were a Catholic. Any Catholic
+would."
+
+"I daresay _you_ would. But your father never troubles himself about
+such things--he leaves them to the women. He wouldn't care."
+
+"Yes, he would. You must not judge my father--he thinks without
+speaking; he is a very silent person."
+
+Sarella laughed again.
+
+"Not so silent as you imagine," she said slyly; "he talks to me, my
+dear."
+
+"Very likely. I daresay you are easier to talk to than I am. For I too
+am silent--I have not seen towns and things like you."
+
+"It does make a difference," Sarella admitted complacently. Then, with
+more covert interest than she showed: "If you really think he would like
+me to go with you to Mass, I should be glad to please him. After all,
+one should encourage him in this desire to resume his religious duties.
+Perhaps he would take us again."
+
+"I am quite sure he would like you to hear Mass with us," Mariquita
+repeated slowly.
+
+"Then I will do so. You had better tell me about it--one would not like
+to do the wrong thing."
+
+Perhaps Mariquita told her more about it than Sarella had intended.
+
+"She is tremendously in earnest, anyway," Sarella decided; "she can talk
+on _that_ eagerly enough. I must say," she thought, good-naturedly, "I
+_am_ glad _her_ father's giving her the chance of doing it. I had no
+idea she felt about it like that. She is good--to care so much and never
+say a word of what it is to her not to have it. I never thought there
+was an ounce of religion about the place. She evidently thinks her
+father cares, too. I should want some persuading of _that_. But she may
+be right in saying he expects me to go to his church. She is very
+positive. And some men are like that--their women must do what they do.
+They leave church alone for twenty years, but when they begin to go to
+church their women must go at once. And the Don is masterful enough.
+Perhaps he thinks it's time he began to remember his soul. If so, he is
+sure to begin by bothering about other people's souls. She thinks a lot
+more of him than he thinks of her. In his way, though, he is just as
+Spanish as she is; I suppose that's why I'm to go to Mass."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+Don Joaquin had sounded Mariquita with reference to Sarella's religion.
+It suited him to sound Sarella in reference to Mariquita--and another
+person. This he would not have done had he not regarded Sarella as
+potentially a near relation.
+
+"Mr. Gore talks about interesting things?" he observed tentatively.
+
+"What people call 'interesting things' are sometimes very tedious," she
+answered smartly, intending to please him.
+
+He _was_ a little pleased, but not diverted from his purpose. He never
+was diverted from his purposes.
+
+"He is a different sort of person from any Mariquita has known," he
+remarked; "conversation like his must interest her."
+
+"Only, she does not converse with him."
+
+"But she hears."
+
+"Oh! Mariquita _hears_ everything."
+
+"You don't think she finds him tedious?"
+
+"Oh, no! She does not know anyone is tedious." It by no means struck her
+father that this was a fault in her.
+
+"It is better to be content with one's company," he said. Then, "He does
+not find _her_ tedious, I think, though she speaks little."
+
+"Mr. Gore? Anything but!" And Sarella laughed.
+
+Don Joaquin waited for more, and got it.
+
+"Nobody could interest him more," she declared with conviction, shaking
+her head with pregnant meaning.
+
+"Ah! So I have thought sometimes," Don Joaquin agreed.
+
+"_Anyone_ could see it. Except Mariquita," she proceeded.
+
+"Mariquita not?"
+
+"Not she! Mariquita's eyes look so high she cannot see you and me, nor
+Mr. Gore."
+
+After "you and me" Sarella had made an infinitesimal pause, and had
+darted an instantaneous glance at Don Joaquin. He had scarcely time to
+catch the glance before it was averted and Sarella added, "or Mr.
+Gore."
+
+Don Joaquin did not think it objectionable in his daughter "not to see"
+"you and me"--himself and Sarella--too hastily. But it would ultimately
+be advisable that she should see what was coming before it actually
+came. That would save telling. Neither would he have been pleased if she
+had quickly scented a lover in Mr. Gore; that would have offended her
+father's sense of dignity. Nor would it have been advisable for her to
+suspect a lover in Mr. Gore at any time, if Mr. Gore were not intending
+to be one. Once he was really desirous of being one, and her father
+approved, she might as well awake to it.
+
+"It is true," he said, "Mariquita has not those ideas."
+
+There was undoubtedly a calm communication in his tone. Sarella could
+not decide whether it implied censure of "those ideas" elsewhere.
+
+"Not seeing what can be seen," she suggested with some pique, "may
+deceive others. Thus false hopes are given."
+
+"Mariquita has given no hopes to anyone," her father declared sharply.
+
+"Certainly not. Yet Mr. Gore may think that what is visible must be
+seen--like his 'interest' in her; and that, since it is seen and not
+disapproved...."
+
+"Only, as you said, Mariquita _doesn't_ see."
+
+"He may not understand that. He may see nothing objectionable in
+himself...."
+
+"There is nothing objectionable. The contrary."
+
+And Sarella knew from his tone that Don Joaquin did not disapprove of
+Mr. Gore as a possible son-in-law.
+
+"How hard it is," she thought, "to get these Spaniards to say anything
+out. Why can't they say what they mean?"
+
+Sarella was not deficient in a sort of superficial good-nature. It
+seemed to her that she would have to "help things along." She thought it
+out of the question for Mariquita to go on indefinitely at the range,
+doing the work of three women for no reward, and rapidly losing her
+youth, letting her life be simply wasted. There had never been anyone
+before Mr. Gore, and never would be anyone else; it would be a
+providential way out of the present impossible state of things if he and
+Mariquita should make a match of it. And why shouldn't they? She did not
+believe that he was actually in love with Mariquita yet; perhaps he
+never would be till he discovered in her some sort of response. And
+Mariquita if left to herself was capable of going on for ten years just
+as she was.
+
+"Mr. Gore," she told Don Joaquin, "is not the sort of man to throw
+himself at a girl's head if he imagined it would be unpleasant to her."
+
+"Why should he be unpleasant to her?"
+
+"No reason at all. And he isn't unpleasant to her. Only she never thinks
+of--that sort of thing."
+
+Her father did not want her to "think of that sort of thing"--till
+called upon. Sarella saw that, and thought him as stupid as his
+daughter.
+
+His idea of what would be correct was that Gore should "speak to him,"
+that he should (after due examination of his conditions) signify
+approval, first to Gore himself, and then to Mariquita, whereupon it
+would be her duty to listen encouragingly to Mr. Gore's proposals. Don
+Joaquin made Sarella understand that these were his notions.
+
+("How Spanish!" she thought.)
+
+"You'll never get it done that way," she told him shortly. "Mr. Gore
+will not say a word to you till he thinks Mariquita would not be
+offended--"
+
+"Why should she be offended!"
+
+"She would be, if Mr. Gore came to you, till she had given him some
+cause for believing she cared at all for him. He knows that well enough.
+You may be sure that while she seems unaware of his taking an interest
+in her, he will never give you the least hint. He doesn't _want_ to
+marry her--yet. He won't let himself want it before she gives _some_
+sign."
+
+Sarella understood her own meaning quite well, but Don Joaquin did not
+understand it so clearly.
+
+He took an early opportunity of saying to his daughter:
+
+"I think Mr. Gore a nice man. He is correct. I approve of him. And it is
+an advantage that he is a Catholic."
+
+To call it "an advantage" seemed to Mariquita a dry way of putting it,
+but then her father _was_ dry.
+
+"Living in the house," he continued, wishing she would say something,
+"he must be intimate with us. I find him suitable for that. One would
+not care for it in every case. Had he turned out a different sort of
+person, I should not have wished for any friendship between him and
+yourselves--Sarella and you. It might have been out of place."
+
+"I do not think there would ever be much friendship between Sarella and
+him," said Mariquita; "she hardly listens when he talks about things--"
+
+"But _you_ should listen. It would be not courteous to make him think
+you found his conversation tedious."
+
+"Tedious! I listen with interest."
+
+"No doubt. And there is nothing out of place in your showing it. He is
+no longer a stranger to us."
+
+"He is kind," she said. "He worked hard to help Jack in getting his shed
+fit for Ginger. It was he who built the partitions. Jack told me. Mr.
+Gore said nothing about it. Also, he was good to Ben Sturt when he hurt
+his knee and could not ride; he went and sat with him, chatting, and
+read funny books to him. He is a very kind person. I am glad you like
+him--I was not sure."
+
+"I waited. One wishes to know a stranger before liking him, as you call
+it; what is more important, I approve of him, and find him correct."
+
+Whether this helped much we cannot say. Sarella didn't think so, though
+Don Joaquin reported it to her with much complacence.
+
+"She must know now," he said, "that I _authorize_ him."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+Jack sounded Mr. Gore's praises loudly in Mariquita's ears, and she
+heard them gladly. She thought well of her fellow-creatures, and it was
+always pleasant to her to hear them commended.
+
+Jack also bragged a little of his diplomacy, bidding his daughter note
+how Miss Mariquita had been pleased by his praise of her sweetheart.
+
+"Miss Mariquita has not got even a sweetheart," Ginger declared, "and
+maybe never will. It isn't the way of her. She was just as proud when
+you said a good word for Ben Sturt."
+
+"Ben Sturt! What's _he_ to the young mistress?"
+
+"Just nothing at all--not in that way. Nor yet Mr. Gore isn't. And the
+more's the pity. But she's good-hearted. She likes to hear good of
+folk--as much as some likes to hear ill of anybody, no matter who."
+
+Jack was a little discouraged--but not effectually.
+
+Mr. Gore was much too slow, he thought. Why should Miss Mariquita be
+thinking of him unless he "let on" how much he was thinking of her?
+
+"Did you ever lie under an apple-tree when the blossom was on it?" he
+asked Gore one day.
+
+"I daresay I have."
+
+"And expected to have your mouth full of apples when there was only
+blossom on it?"
+
+Jack forced so much meaning into his ugly old face that Gore could
+discern the allegorical intent. He was very amused.
+
+"There'd never be much _chance_ of apples," he said carelessly, "if the
+tree was shaken till the blossom fell off. The wind spoils more blossom
+than the frost does."
+
+Jack was not the only one who thought Gore slow in his wooing; the
+cowboys thought so too, though they did not, like Jack, find any fault
+with him for his slowness. In general they would have been more critical
+of rapidity and apparent success. Ben Sturt had learned to like him
+cordially, and wished him success, but Ben was of opinion that more
+haste would have been worse speed. He thought that Gore deserved
+Mariquita if anyone could, but was sure that even Gore would have to
+wait long and be very patient and careful. To Ben Mariquita seemed
+almost like one belonging to another world, certainly living on a plane
+above his comprehension, where ordinary love-making would be, somehow,
+unfitting and hopeless. It had always met with her father's cool
+approbation that Mariquita kept herself aloof from the young men about
+the place. But she was not wanting in interest for them. They were her
+neighbors, and she, who had so much interest for all her little dumb
+neighbors of the prairie, had a much higher interest in these bigger,
+but not much less dumb, neighbors of the homestead. They were more than
+a mere group to her. Each individual in the group was, she knew, as dear
+to God as herself, had been created by God for the same purpose as
+herself, and for the soul of each, Christ upon the Cross had been in as
+bitter labor as for the soul of any one of the saints. She was the last
+creature on earth to regard as of mere casual interest to herself those
+in whom God's interest was so deep, and close, and unfailing.
+
+Perhaps they were rough; it might be that of the great things of which
+Mariquita herself thought so habitually, they thought little and seldom:
+but she did not think them bad. She thought more of them than they
+guessed, and liked them better than they imagined. She would have wished
+to serve and help them, and was not indolent, but humble concerning
+herself, and shy. She worked for them, more perhaps than her father
+thought necessary; in that way she could serve them. But she could not
+preach to them, nor exhort them. She would have shrunk instinctively,
+not from the danger of ridicule, but from the danger that the ridicule
+might fall on religion itself, and not merely on her. She would have
+dreaded the risk of misrepresenting religion to them, of giving them
+ideas of God such as would repel them from Him. She knew that speech was
+not easy to her, eloquent speech was no gift of hers; she did not
+believe herself to have any readiness of expressing what she felt and
+knew, and did not credit herself with great knowledge. She did not
+really put them down as being entirely ignorant of what she did know.
+
+The idea of a woman's preaching would have shocked Mariquita, to her it
+would have seemed "out of place." She was a humble girl, with a
+diffidence not universal among those who are themselves trying to serve
+God, some of whom are apt to be slow at understanding that others may be
+as near Him as themselves, though behaving differently, and holding a
+different fashion of speech.
+
+God who had made them must know more about them, she felt, than she
+could. She did not think she understood them very well, but God had made
+the men and knew them as well as He knew the women. She was, with all
+her ignorance and her limited opportunities of observation and
+understanding, able to see much goodness among these neighbors of hers;
+He must be able to see much more.
+
+In reality Mariquita did more for them than she had any idea of. They
+understood that in her was something higher than their understanding;
+that her goodness was real they did understand. It never shocked them as
+the "goodness" of some good people would by a first instinct have
+shocked them, by its uncharity, its self-conscious superiority, its
+selfishness, its complacence, its eagerness to assume the Divine
+prerogative of judgment and of punishment. They were, perhaps
+unconsciously, proud of her, who was so plainly never proud of herself.
+They knew that she was kind. They had penetration enough to be aware
+that if she held her own way, in some external aloofness, it was not out
+of cold indifference, or self-centred pride, not even out of a prudish
+shrinking from their roughness. They became less rough. Their behavior
+in her sight and hearing was not without effect upon their behavior in
+her absence. She taught them a reverence for woman that may only have
+begun in respect for herself. Almost all of them cared enough for her
+approval to try and become more capable of deserving it. Some of them,
+God who taught them knows how, became conscious of her lonely absorption
+in prayer, and the prairie became less empty to them. Probably none of
+them remained ignorant that to the girl God was life and breath,
+happiness and health, master and companion: the explanation of herself
+and of her beauty. They did not understand it all, but they saw more
+than they understood.
+
+The loveliness of each flower preached to Mariquita; sometimes she would
+sit upon the ground, her heart beating, holding in her hand one of those
+tiny weeds that millions of eyes can overlook without perceiving they
+are beautiful, insignificant in size, without any blaze of color, and
+realize its marvel of loveliness with a singular exultation; she would
+note the exquisite perfection of its minute parts--that each tiny spray
+was a string of stars, white, or tenderest azure, or mauve,
+gold-centred, a microscopic installation hidden all its life on the
+prairie-floor, as if falling from heaven it had grown smaller and
+smaller as it neared the earth. Her heart beat, I say, as she looked,
+and the light shining in her happy eyes was exultation at the
+unimaginable loveliness of God, who had imagined this minutest creature,
+and thought it worth while to conceive this and every other lovely thing
+for the house even of His children's exile and probation, their
+waiting-room on the upward road. So it preached to her the Uncreated
+Beauty, and the unbeginning, Eternal Love. As unconscious as was the
+little flower of its fragrance, its loveliness and its message,
+Mariquita, who could never have preached, was giving her message too.
+
+Her rough neighbors saw her near them and (perhaps without knowing that
+they knew it) knew that that which made her rare and exquisite was of
+Divine origin. She never hinted covert exhortation in her talk. If she
+spoke to any of them they could listen without dread of some shrewdly
+folded rebuke. Yet they could not get away from the fact that she was
+herself a perpetual reminder of noble purpose.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+What the cowboys had come, with varying degrees of slowness or celerity,
+to feel by intuitions little instructed by experience or reasoning, Gore
+had to arrive at by more deliberate study.
+
+He was more civilized and less instinctive. He knew many more people,
+and had experience, wanting to them, of many women of fine and high
+character. What made the rarity of Mariquita's instinct did not inform
+him, and he had to observe and surmise.
+
+He saw no books in the house, and did not perceive how Mariquita could
+read; she must, in the way of information and knowledge such as most
+educated girls possess be, as it were, disinherited. Yet he did not feel
+that she was ignorant. It is more ignorant to have adopted false
+knowledge than to be uninformed.
+
+Every day added to Gore's sense of the girl's rarity and nobility. He
+admired her more and more, the reverence of his admiration increasing
+with its growth. Nor was his appreciation blind, or blinded. He surmised
+a certain lack in her--the absence of humor, and he was, at any rate, so
+far correct that Mariquita was without the habit of humor. Long after
+this time, she was thought by her companions to have a delightful
+radiant cheerfulness like mirth. But when Gore first knew her, what
+occasion had she had for indulgence in the habit of humor?
+
+Her father's house was not gay, and he would have thought gaiety in it
+out of place. Loud laughter might resound in the cowboys' quarters, but
+Don Joaquin would have much disapproved any curiosity in his daughter as
+to its cause. He seldom laughed himself and never wished to make anyone
+else laugh. His Spanish blood and his Indian blood almost equally tended
+to make him regard laughter and merriment as a slur on dignity.
+
+Some of those who have attempted the elusive feat of analyzing the
+causes and origin of humor lay down that it lies in a perception of the
+incongruous, the less fit. I should be sorry to think that a complete
+account of the matter. No doubt it describes the occasion of much of our
+laughter, though not, I refuse to believe, of all.
+
+That sense of humor implies little charity, and a good deal of conscious
+superiority. It makes us laugh at accidents not agreeable to those who
+suffer them, at uncouthness, ignorances, solecisms, inferiorities,
+follies, blunders, stupidities, unconsciously displayed weaknesses and
+faults. It is the sort of humor that sets us laughing at a smartly
+dressed person fallen into a filthy drain, at a man who does not know
+how to eat decently, at mispronunciation of names, and misapplication or
+oblivion of aspirates, at greediness not veiled by politeness, at a man
+singing who doesn't know how. Now Mariquita had no conceit and was
+steeped in charity in big and little things. In that sort of humor she
+would have been lacking, for she would have thought too kindly of its
+butt to be able to enjoy his misfortune. And, as has been already said,
+she had no habit of the thing.
+
+Gore, in accusing her of lack of humor, felt that the accusation was a
+heavy one. It was not quite unjust: we have partly explained Mariquita's
+deficiency without entirely denying it, or pretending it was an
+attraction. No doubt, she would have been a greater laugher if she had
+been more ill-natured, had had wider opportunities of perceiving the
+absurdity of her contemporaries.
+
+As for those queer and quaint quips of circumstance that make the oddity
+of daily life for some of us, few of them had enlivened Mariquita. The
+chief occasion of general gathering was round the table, where hunger
+and haste were the most obvious characteristics of the meeting. Till
+Gore came, there had been little conversation. It was not Mariquita's
+fault that she had been used neither to see or hear much that was
+entertaining. Perhaps the facility of being amused is an acquired taste;
+and even so, the faculty of humor is almost of necessity dormant where
+scarcely anything offers for it to work or feed upon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+The projected visit to Maxwell did not immediately take place. Don
+Joaquin was seldom hasty in action, having a chronic, habitual esteem
+for deliberation and deliberateness too.
+
+Sarella would have been impatient had she not been sufficiently unwell
+to shrink for the moment from the idea of a very long ride. For the mere
+pleasure of riding she would never have mounted a horse; she would only
+ride when there was no other means of arriving at some object or place
+not otherwise attainable.
+
+Gore, however, was again absent on the second Saturday after his first
+visit to Maxwell. And on this occasion his place was vacant at
+breakfast. Nor did he return till Monday afternoon.
+
+On that afternoon Mariquita had walked out some distance across the
+prairie. Not in the direction of the Maxwell trail, but quite in the
+opposite direction. Her way brought her to what they called Saul
+Bluff--a very low, broken ridge, sparsely overgrown with small rather
+shabby trees. It would scarcely have hidden the chimneys of a cottage
+had there been any cottage on its farther side; but there was none
+anywhere near it. For many miles there was no building in any direction,
+except "Don Jo's," as, to its owner's annoyance, his homestead was
+called.
+
+When Mariquita had reached the top of the bluff she took advantage of
+the slight elevation on which she stood, to look round upon the great
+spread of country stretching to the low horizon on every side. It was,
+like most days here, a day of wind and sun. The air was utterly pure and
+scentless; the scent was not fir-scent, and the scattered, windy trees
+gave no smell. She saw a chipmunk and laughed, as the sight of that
+queer little creature, and its odd mixture of shyness and effrontery
+always made her laugh.
+
+It was even singularly clear, and the foothills of the Rockies were just
+visible. The trail, which ran over the bluff a little to her left, was
+full in sight below her, but so little used as to be slight enough. A
+mile farther on it crossed the river, and was too faint to be seen
+beyond. The river was five miles behind her as well as a mile in front,
+for it made a big loop, north, and then, west-about, southward.
+
+She sat down and for a long time was rapt in her own thoughts, which
+were not, at first, of any human person. Perhaps she would not herself
+have said that she was praying. But all prayer does not consist in
+begging favors even for others. Its essence does not lie in request, but
+in the lifting of self, heart and mind, to God. The love of a child to
+its father need not necessarily find its sole exercise and expression in
+demand. Her thought and love flew up to her Father and rested,
+immeasurably happy. The real joys of her life were in that presence. The
+sense of His love, not merely for herself, was the higher bliss it gave
+her: not merely for herself, I say, for it spread as wide as all
+humanity, and her own share in it was as little as a star in the milky
+way, in the whole glory, what it is for all the saints in heaven and on
+earth, for all sinners, for His great Mother, and, most immeasurable of
+all, the infinite perfection of His love for Himself, of Father and Son
+for the Holy Spirit, of Son and Spirit for the Eternal Father, of Spirit
+and Father for the Son. This stretched far beyond the reach of her
+vision, but she looked as far as her human sight could reach, as one
+looks on that much of the mystic ocean that eye can hold. Not separable
+from this joy in the Divine Love was her joy in the Divine Beauty, of
+which all created beauty sang, whether it were that of the smallest
+flower or that of Christ's Mother herself. The wind's clean breath
+whispered of it; the vast loveliness of the enormous dome above her, and
+the limitless expanse of not less lovely earth on which that dome
+rested, witnessed to the Infinite Beauty that had imagined and made
+them.
+
+But sooner or later Mariquita must _share_, for in that the silent
+tenderness of her nature showed itself: she could not be content to have
+her great happiness to herself, to enjoy alone. So, presently, in her
+prayer she came, as always, to gathering round her all whom she knew
+and all whom she did not know. As she would have wished _them_ to think
+in their prayer of her, so must she have them also in the Divine
+Presence with her, lift their names up to God, even their names which,
+unknown to her, He knew as well as He knew her own.
+
+Her living father and her dead mother, the old school-friends and the
+nuns, the old priest at Loretto, and a certain crooked old gardener that
+had been there (crooked in body, in face, and in temper), Sarella, and
+Mr. Gore, and all the cowboys--all these Mariquita gathered into the
+loving arms of her memory, and presented them at their Father's feet.
+Her way in this was her own way, and unlike perhaps that of others. She
+had no idea of bringing them to God's memory, as if His tenderness
+needed any reminder from her, for always she heard Him saying: "Can you
+teach Me pity and love?" She did not think it depended on her that good
+should come to them from Him. Were she to be lazy or forgetful, He would
+never let them suffer through her neglect. They were immeasurably more
+His than they could be hers. But she could not be at His feet and not in
+her loving mind see them there beside her, and she knew He chose that at
+His feet she should not forget them. She could not dictate to Him what
+He was to give them, in what fashion He should bless and help them. He
+knew exactly. Her surmises must be ignorant.
+
+Therefore Mariquita's prayer was more wordless than common, less
+phrased; but its intensity was more uncommon. Nor could it be limited to
+those--a handful out of all His children--whom she knew or had ever
+known. There were all the rest--everywhere: those who knew how to serve
+Him, and were doing it, as she had never learned to serve; those who had
+never heard His name, and those who knew it but shrank from it as that
+of an angry observer; those most hapless ones who lived by disobeying
+Him, even by dragging others down into the slough of disobedience; the
+whole world's sick, body-sick and soul-sick; those who here are mad, and
+will find reason only in heaven; the whole world's sorrowful ones, the
+luckless, those gripped in the hard clutch of penury, or the sordid
+clutch of debt; the blind whose first experience of beauty will be
+perfect beauty, the foully diseased, the deformed, the deaf and dumb
+whose first speech will be their joining in the songs of heaven, their
+first hearing that of the music of heaven ... all these, and many, many
+others she must bring about her, or her gladness in God's nearness would
+be selfishness. That nearness! she felt Him much nearer than was her own
+raiment, nearer than was her own flesh....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+It was long after Mariquita had come to her place upon the bluff, that
+the sound of a horse cantering towards it made her rise and go to the
+farther westward edge of the bluff to look. The horseman was quite near,
+below her. It was Gore, and he saw her at the same moment in which she
+saw him. He lifted his big, wide-brimmed hat from his head and waved it.
+It would never have even occurred to her to be guilty of the
+churlishness of turning away to go homeward. Her thoughts, almost the
+only thing of her own she had ever had, she was always ready to lay
+aside for courtesy.
+
+He had dismounted, and was leading his horse up the rather steep slope.
+She stood waiting for him, a light rather than a smile upon her noble
+face, a light like the glow of a far horizon....
+
+"I thought," she said, when he had come up, "that you had gone to
+Maxwell."
+
+"No, I went to Denver this time," he told her, "beyond Denver a little.
+Where do you think I heard Mass yesterday--this morning again, too? for
+both of us, since you could not come."
+
+"Not at Loretto!"
+
+But she knew it was at Loretto. His smile told her.
+
+"Yes, at Loretto. It was the same to me which place I went to. No, not
+the same, for I wanted to see the place where you had been a little
+girl, so that I could come back and bring you word of it."
+
+"Ah, how kind you are!" she said, with a sort of wonder of gratefulness
+shining on her.
+
+("She is far more beautiful than I ever knew," he thought.)
+
+"Not kind at all," Gore protested. "Just to please myself! There's no
+great kindness in that except to myself."
+
+"Oh, yes! for you knew how it would please me. It was wonderful that you
+should be so kind as to think of it."
+
+"It gave _me_ pleasure anyway. To be in the place where you had been so
+happy--"
+
+"Ah, but I am always happy," she interrupted. "Though indeed I was happy
+there, and sorrowful to leave it. But I did not leave it quite behind;
+it came with me."
+
+"I have a great many things to tell you. They remember you _most_
+faithfully. If my going gave _me_ pleasure, it gave them much more. You
+cannot think how much they made of me for your sake; I stayed there a
+long time after Mass yesterday, and they made me go back in the
+afternoon--I was there all afternoon. And all the time we were talking
+of you."
+
+"Then I think," Mariquita declared, laughing merrily, "your talk will
+have been monotonous."
+
+"Oh, not monotonous at all. Are they not dear women? They showed me
+where you sat in chapel--and the different places where you had sat in
+classrooms, and in the refectory, when you first came, as a small girl
+of ten, and as you rose in the school."
+
+"I did not rise very high. I was never one of the clever ones--"
+
+"They kept that to themselves--"
+
+"Oh, yes! They would do that. Nuns are so charitable--they would never
+say that any of the girls was stupid."
+
+"No, they didn't hint that in the least. Sister Gabriel showed me a
+drawing of yours."
+
+"What was it?"
+
+"She said it was the Grand Canal at Venice. I have never been there--"
+
+"Nor I. But I remember doing it. The water wouldn't come flat. It looked
+like a blue road running up-hill. Sister Gabriel was very kind, very
+kind indeed. She used to have hay-fever."
+
+"So she has now. She listened for more than half-an-hour while I told
+her about you."
+
+"Mr. Gore, I think you will have been inventing things to tell her,"
+Mariquita protested, laughing again. She kept laughing, for happiness
+and pleasure.
+
+"Oh, no! On the contrary, I kept forgetting things. Afterwards I
+remembered some of them, and told her what I had left out. Some I only
+remembered when it was too late, after I had come away. Sister Marie
+Madeleine--I hope you remember her too--she asked hundreds of questions
+about you."
+
+"Oh, yes, of course I remember her. She taught me French. And I was
+stupid about it...."
+
+"She was very anxious to know if you kept it up. She said you wanted
+only practice--and vocabulary."
+
+"And idiom, and grammar, and pronunciation," Mariquita insisted,
+laughing very cheerfully. "Did you tell her there was no one to keep it
+up with?"
+
+He told her of many others of the nuns--he had evidently taken trouble
+to bring her word of them all. And he had asked for news of the girls
+she had known best, and brought her news of them also. Several were
+married, two had entered Holy Religion.
+
+"Sylvia Markham," he said, "you remember her? She has come back to
+Loretto to be a nun. She is a novice; she was clothed at Easter. Sister
+Mary Scholastica she is--the younger children call her Sister Elastic."
+
+"Oh," cried Mariquita, with her happy laugh, "how funny it is--to hear
+you talking of Sylvia. She was harum-scarum. What a noise she used to
+make, too! How pretty she was!"
+
+"Sister Elastic is just as pretty. She sent fifty messages to you. But
+Nellie Hurst--you remember her?"
+
+"Certainly I do. She was champion at baseball. And she acted better than
+anybody. Oh, and she edited the Magazine, and she kept us all laughing.
+She _was_ funny! Geraldine Barnes had a quinsy and it nearly choked her,
+but Nellie Hurst made her laugh so much that it burst, and she was soon
+well again...."
+
+"Well, and where do you think she is now?"
+
+"Where?" Mariquita asked almost breathlessly.
+
+"In California. At Santa Clara, near San José. She is a Carmelite."
+
+"A Carmelite! And she used to say she would write plays (She did write
+several that were acted at Loretto) and act them herself--on the stage,
+I mean."
+
+It took Gore a long time to tell all his budget of news; he had hardly
+finished before they reached the homestead, towards which the sinking
+sun had long warned them to be moving. And he had presents for her, a
+rosary ("brought by Mother General from Rome and blessed by the Pope,")
+a prayerbook, a lovely Agnus Dei covered with white satin and
+beautifully embroidered, scapulars, a little bottle of Lourdes water,
+another of ordinary holy water, and a little hanging stoup to put some
+of it in, also a statue of Our Lady, and a small framed print of the
+Holy House of Loretto.
+
+Mariquita had never owned so many things in her life.
+
+"Oh, dear!" she said. "And I had been long thinking that I was quite
+forgotten there; I am ashamed. And you--how to thank you!"
+
+"But you have been thanking me all the time," he said, "ever since I
+told you where I had been. Every time you laughed you thanked me."
+
+They met Ben Sturt, who was lounging about by the gate in the homestead
+fence; he had never seen Mariquita with just that light of happiness
+upon her.
+
+"Here," he said to Gore, "let me take the horse; I'll see to him."
+
+He knew that Mariquita would not come to the stables, and he wanted Gore
+to be free to stay with her to the last moment.
+
+As he led the horse away he thought to himself: "It has really begun at
+last;" and he loyally wished his friend good luck.
+
+Within a yard or two of the door they met Don Joaquin.
+
+"Father," she said at once, "Mr. Gore didn't go to Maxwell this time. He
+went all the way to Denver--to Loretto. And see what a lot of presents
+he has brought me from them!"
+
+Gore thought she looked adorable as, like a child unused to gifts, she
+showed her little treasures to the rather grim old prairie dog.
+
+He looked less grim than usual. It suited him that she should be so
+pleased.
+
+"Well!" he said, "you're stocked now. Mr. Gore had a long ride to fetch
+them."
+
+"Oh, yes! Did you ever hear of anybody being so kind?"
+
+Her father noted shrewdly the new expression of grateful pleasure on her
+face. It seemed to him that Gore was not so incompetent as he had been
+supposing, to carry on his campaign. Sarella came out and joined them.
+"What a cunning little pin-cushion!" she exclaimed. "Isn't it just
+sweet?" The Agnus Dei was almost the only one of Mariquita's new
+treasures to which she could assign a use.
+
+"Oh, and the necklace! Garnets relieved by those crystal blobs are just
+the very fashion."
+
+"It is a rosary," Don Joaquin explained in a rather stately tone. It
+made him uneasy--it must be unlucky--to hear these frivolous eulogies
+applied to "holy objects" with which personally he had never had the
+familiarity that diminishes awe.
+
+Mariquita had plenty to do indoors and did not linger. Gore went in also
+to wash and tidy himself after his immensely long ride.
+
+Sarella, who of course knew long before this where Mariquita had
+received her education, and had been told whence these pious gifts came,
+smiled as she turned to Don Joaquin.
+
+"So Gore rode all the way to Denver this time," she remarked.
+
+"It is beyond Denver. Mariquita was pleased to hear news of her old
+friends."
+
+"Oh, I daresay. Gore is not such a fool as he looks."
+
+"I am not thinking that he looks a fool at all," said Don Joaquin, more
+stately than ever.
+
+("How Spanish!" thought Sarella, "I suppose they're _born_ solemn.")
+
+"Indeed," she cheerfully agreed, "nor do I. He wouldn't be so handsome
+if he looked silly. He's all sense. And he knows his road, short cuts
+and all."
+
+Don Joaquin disliked her mention of Gore's good looks, as she intended.
+She had no idea of being snubbed by her elderly suitor.
+
+"Mariquita," he laid down, "will think more of his good sense than of
+his appearance. I have not brought her up to consider a gentleman's
+looks."
+
+Sarella laughed; she was not an easy person to "down."
+
+"But you didn't bring _me_ up," she said, "and I can tell you that you
+might have been as wise as Solomon and it wouldn't have mattered to me
+if you had been ugly. I'd rather look than listen any day; and I like to
+have something worth looking at."
+
+Her very pretty eyes were turned full on her mature admirer's face, and
+he did not dislike their flattery. An elderly man who has been very
+handsome is not often displeased at being told he is worth looking at
+still.
+
+"So do I, Sarellita," he responded, telling himself (and her) how much
+pleasure there was in looking at _her_.
+
+Stately he could not help being, but his manner had now no stiffness;
+and in the double diminutive of her name there was almost a tenderness,
+a nearer approach to tenderness than she could understand. She could
+understand, however, that he was more lover-like than he had ever been.
+
+A slight flush of satisfaction (that he took for maiden shyness) was on
+her face, as she looked up under her half-drooped eyelids.
+
+"Perhaps," he said in much lower tones than he usually employed,
+"perhaps Mr. Gore knows what you call his road better than I. But he
+does not know better the goal he wants to reach."
+
+("Say!" Sarella asked herself, "what's coming?")
+
+Two of the cowboys were coming--had come in fact. They appeared at that
+moment round the corner of the house, ready for supper.
+
+"So," one of them said, with rather loud irritation, evidently
+concluding a story, "my dad married her, and I have a step-ma younger
+than myself--"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+Everyone on the range, from its owner down to old Jack, considered that
+Gore made much more way after his trip to Denver. Mariquita, it was
+decided, had, as it were, awakened to him. It was believed that she and
+he saw more of each other, and that she liked his company.
+
+Sarella thought things were going so well that they had much better be
+left to themselves, and this view she strongly impressed upon Don
+Joaquin. He had gradually come to hold a higher opinion of her sense; at
+first he had been attracted entirely by her beauty. Her aunt had not
+been remarkable for intelligence, and he had not thought the niece could
+be expected to be wiser than her departed elder.
+
+Sarella, on the other hand, did not think her admirer quite so sensible
+as he really was. That he was shrewd and successful in business, she
+knew, but was the less impressed that his methods had been slow and
+unhurried. To her eastern ideas there was nothing imposing (though
+extremely comfortable) in a moderate wealth accumulated by thirty years
+of patient work and stingy expenditure. But she was sure he did not in
+the least understand his own daughter, in whom she (who did not
+understand her any better than she would have understood Dante's _Divina
+Commedia_) saw nothing at all difficult to understand. The truth was
+that Don Joaquin had never understood any woman; without imagination, he
+could understand no sex but his own--and his experience of women was of
+the narrowest. Nevertheless, he was nearer to a sort of rough, nebulous
+perception of his daughter than was Sarella herself.
+
+His saying that Mariquita would not "consider" Gore's good looks, a
+remark that Sarella thought merely ridiculous, was an illustration of
+this. In his _explicit_ mind, in his conscious attitude towards
+Mariquita, he assumed that it was _her_ business and duty to respect
+_him_. He was her parent, so placed by God, and he had a great and
+sincere reverence for such Divine appointments as placed himself in a
+condition of superiority. (Insubordination or insolence in the cowboys
+would have gravely and honestly scandalized him). All the same, in an
+inner mind that he never consulted, and whose instruction he was far
+from seeking, he knew that his daughter was a higher creature than
+himself; all he _knew_ that he knew was that a young girl was
+necessarily more innocent and pure than an elderly man could be (he
+himself was no profligate); that in fact all women were more religious
+than men, and that it behooved them to be so; nature made it easier for
+them.
+
+He had after deliberate consideration decided that it would be
+convenient and suitable that his daughter should marry Gore; the young
+man, he was sure, wished it, and, while the circumstances in which she
+was placed held little promise of a wide choice of husbands for her, he
+would, in Don Joaquin's opinion, make a quite suitable husband. To do
+him justice, he would never have manoeuvred to bring Gore into a
+marriage with Mariquita, had he appeared indifferent to the girl, or
+had he seemed in any way unfit.
+
+But, though Don Joaquin had reached the point of intending the marriage,
+he saw no occasion for much love-making, and none for Mariquita's
+falling in love with the young man's handsome face and fine figure. Her
+business was to learn that her father approved the young man as a
+suitor, and to recognize that that approval stamped him as suitable.
+That Mariquita would not _suddenly_ learn this lesson, Sarella had
+partly convinced him; but he did not think there would now be any
+suddenness in the matter. He would have spoken with authoritative
+plainness to her now, without further delay; but there was a
+difficulty--Gore had not spoken to him.
+
+Don Joaquin thought it was about time he did so.
+
+"You think," he remarked when they were alone together over the fire,
+"that you shall buy Blaine's?"
+
+Now Gore would certainly not buy a range so near Don Joaquin's if he
+should fail to secure a mistress for it in Don Joaquin's daughter. And
+he was by no means inclined to take success with her for granted. He was
+beginning to hope that there was a chance of success--that was all.
+
+"It is worth the money," he answered; "and I have the money. But I have
+not absolutely decided to settle down to this way of life at all."
+
+"I thought you had."
+
+"Well, no. It must depend on what does not depend upon myself."
+
+Don Joaquin found this enigmatical, which Gore might or might not have
+intended that he should. Though wholly uncertain how Mariquita might
+regard him when she came to understand that he wished for more than
+friendship, he was by this time quite aware that her father approved;
+and he was particularly anxious that she should not be "bothered."
+
+Don Joaquin diplomatically hinted that Blaine might close with some
+other offer.
+
+"There is no other offer. He told me so quite straightforwardly. I have
+the refusal. If he does get another offer, and I have not decided, he is
+of course quite free to accept it. He does not want to hurry me; I
+expect he knows that if I did buy, he would get a better price from me
+than from anyone else."
+
+Gore might very reasonably be tired after his immensely long ride, and
+when he went off to bed Don Joaquin could not feel aggrieved. But he was
+hardly pleased by the idea that the young man intended to manage his own
+affairs without discussion of them, and to keep his own counsel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+"Just you leave well alone," said Sarella, a little more didactically
+than Don Joaquin cared for. "Things are going as well as can be
+expected" (and here she laughed a little); "they're moving now."
+
+Don Joaquin urged his opinion that Mariquita ought to be enlightened as
+to his approval of her suitor.
+
+Sarella answered, with plain impatience, "If you tell her she has a
+suitor she _won't_ have one. Don't you pry her eyes open with your
+thumb; let them open of themselves."
+
+Don Joaquin only half understood this rhetoric, and he seldom liked what
+he could not understand.
+
+He adopted a slightly primitive measure in reprisal--
+
+"It isn't," he remarked pregnantly, "as if the young man were not a
+Catholic--I would not allow her to marry him if he were not."
+
+"No?"
+
+And it was quite clear to Don Joaquin that he had killed two birds with
+one stone; he saw that Sarella was both interested and impressed.
+
+"Catholics should marry Catholics," he declared with decision.
+
+"You didn't think so always," Sarella observed, smiling.
+
+"If I forgot it, I suffered for it," her elderly admirer retorted.
+
+Sarella was puzzled. She naturally had not the remotest suspicion that
+he had felt his wife's early death as a reprisal on the part of Heaven.
+She knew little of her aunt, and less of that aunt's married life. Had
+there been quarrels about religion?
+
+"Well, I daresay you may be right," she said gravely. "Two religions in
+one house may lead to awkwardness."
+
+"Yes. That is so," he agreed, with a completeness of conviction that
+considerably enlightened her.
+
+"And after all," she went on, smiling with great sweetness, "they're
+only two branches of the same religion."
+
+This was her way of hinting that the little bird he had married would
+have been wise to hop from her own religious twig to his.
+
+This suggestion, however, Don Joaquin utterly repudiated.
+
+"The same religion!" he said, with an energy that almost made Sarella
+jump. "The Catholic Church and heresy all one religion! Black and white
+the same color!"
+
+Sarella was now convinced that he and his wife had fought on the
+subject. On such matters she was quite resolved there should be no
+fighting in her case; concerning expenditure it might be _necessary_ to
+fight. But Sarella was an easy person who had no love for needless
+warfare, and she made up her mind at once.
+
+"I understand, now you put it that way," she said amiably, "you're right
+again. Both can't be right, and the husband is the head of the wife."
+
+Don Joaquin accepted _this_ theory whole-heartedly, and nodded
+approvingly.
+
+"How," he said, "can a Protestant mother bring up her Catholic son?"
+
+Sarella laughed inwardly. So he had quite arranged the sex of his future
+family.
+
+"But," she said with a remarkably swift riposte, "if Catholics should
+not marry Protestants, they have no business to make love to them. Have
+they?"
+
+Her Catholic admirer looked a little silly, and she swore to herself
+that he was blushing.
+
+"Because," she continued, entirely without blushing, "a Catholic
+gentleman made love to _me_ once--"
+
+"Perhaps," suggested Don Joaquin, recovering himself "he hoped you would
+become a Catholic, if you accepted him."
+
+"I daresay," Sarella agreed very cheerfully.
+
+"But you evidently did not accept him."
+
+"As to that," she explained frankly, "he did not go quite so far as
+asking me to marry him."
+
+"He drew back!"
+
+"Not exactly. He was interrupted."
+
+"But didn't he resume the subject?"
+
+Sarella laughed.
+
+"I'd rather not answer that question," she answered; "you're asking
+quite a few questions, aren't you?"
+
+"I want to ask another. Did you like that Catholic gentleman well enough
+to share all he had, his religion, his name, and his home?"
+
+Don Joaquin was not laughing, on the contrary, he was eagerly serious,
+and Sarella laughed no more.
+
+"He never did ask me to share them," she replied with a self-possession
+that her elderly lover admired greatly.
+
+"But he does. He is asking you. Sarella, will you share my religion, and
+my name, my home, and all that I have?"
+
+Even now she was amused inwardly, not all caused by love. She noted, and
+was entertained by noting, how he put first among things she was to
+share, his religion--because he was not so sure of her willingness to
+share that as of her readiness to share his name and his goods, and
+meant to be sure, as she now quite understood. It did not make her
+respect him less. She had the sense to know that he would not make a
+worse husband for caring enough for his religion to make a condition of
+it, and she was grateful for the form in which he put the condition. He
+spared her the brutality of, "I will marry you if you will turn Catholic
+to marry me, but I won't if you refuse to do that."
+
+She smiled again, but not lightly. "I think," she said, "you will need
+some one when Mariquita goes away to a home of her own. And I think I
+could make you comfortable and happy. I will try, anyway. And it would
+never make you happy and comfortable if we were of different religions.
+If my husband's is good enough for him, it must be good enough for me."
+
+Poor Sarella! She was quite homeless, and quite penniless. She had not
+come here with any idea of finding a husband in this elderly Spaniard,
+but she could think of him as a husband, with no repugnance and with
+some satisfaction. He was respectable and trustworthy; she believed him
+to be as fond of her as it was in his nature to be fond of anybody. He
+had prudence and good sense. And his admiration pleased her; her own
+sense told her that she would get in marrying him as much as she could
+expect.
+
+"Shall you tell Mariquita, or shall I?" she inquired before they parted.
+
+"I will tell her. I am her father," he replied.
+
+"Then, do not say anything about her moving off to a home of her own--"
+
+"Why not?" he asked with some obstinacy. For in truth he had thought the
+opportunity would be a good one for "breaking ground."
+
+"Because she will think we want to get rid of her; or she will think _I_
+do. Tell her, instead, that I will do my best to make her happy and
+comfortable. If I were you, I should tell her you count on our marriage
+making it pleasanter for her here."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+When her father informed her of his intended marriage, Mariquita was
+much more taken aback than he had foreseen. He had supposed she must
+have observed more or less what was coming.
+
+"Marry Sarella, father!" she exclaimed, too thoroughly astonished to
+weigh her words, "but you are her uncle!"
+
+Don Joaquin, who was pale enough ordinarily, reddened angrily.
+
+"I am no relation whatever to her," he protested fiercely. "How dare you
+accuse your father of wishing to marry his own niece? How dare you
+insult Sarella by supposing she would marry her uncle?"
+
+It was terrible to Mariquita to see her father so furious. He had never
+been soft or tender to her, but he had hardly ever shown any anger
+towards her, and now he looked at her as if he disliked her.
+
+It did astonish her that Sarella should be willing to marry her uncle.
+Sarella had indeed, as Don Joaquin had not, thought of the difficulty;
+but she saw that there appeared to be none to him; no doubt, he knew
+what was the marriage-law among Catholics, and perhaps that was why he
+was so insistent as to her being one.
+
+"I know," Mariquita said gently, "that there is no blood relationship
+between her and you. She is my first cousin, but she is only your niece
+by marriage. I do not even know what the Church lays down."
+
+Her father was still angry with her, but he was startled as well. He did
+not know any better than herself what the Church laid down. He did know
+that between him and Sarella there was no real relationship--in the law
+of nature there was nothing to bar their marriage, and he had acted in
+perfect good faith. But he did not intend to break the Church's law
+again.
+
+"If you are ignorant of the Church's law," he said severely, "you should
+not talk as if you knew it."
+
+She knew she had not so talked, but she made no attempt to excuse
+herself.
+
+"It is," she said quietly, "quite easy to find out. The priest at
+Maxwell would tell you immediately."
+
+She saw that her father, though still frowning heavily, was not entirely
+disregardful of her suggestion.
+
+"Father," she went on in a low gentle tone, "I beg your pardon if, being
+altogether surprised, I spoke suddenly, and seemed disrespectful."
+
+"You were very disrespectful," he said, with stiff resentment.
+
+Mariquita's large grave eyes were full of tears, but he did not notice
+them, and would have been unmoved if he had seen them. It was difficult
+for her to keep them from overflowing, and more difficult to go on with
+what she wished to say.
+
+"You know," she said, "that there are things which the Church does not
+allow except upon conditions, but does allow on conditions--"
+
+"What things?"
+
+"For instance, marriage with a person who is not a Catholic--"
+
+Don Joaquin received a sudden illumination. Yes! With a dispensation
+that would have been dutiful which he had done undutifully without one.
+
+"You think a dispensation can be obtained in--in this case."
+
+"Father," she answered almost in a whisper, "I am quite ignorant about
+it."
+
+He had severely reprimanded her for speaking, being ignorant. Now he
+wanted encouragement and ordered her to speak.
+
+"But say what you think," he said dictatorially.
+
+"As there is no real relationship," she answered, courageously enough
+after her former snubbing, "if such a marriage is forbidden" (he scowled
+blackly, but she went on), "it cannot be so by the law of God, but by
+the law of the Church. She cannot give anyone permission to disregard
+God's law, but she can, I suppose, make exception to her own law. That
+is what we call a dispensation. God does not forbid the use of meat on
+certain days, but she does. If God forbade it she could never give
+leave for it; but she often gives leave--not only to a certain person,
+but to a whole diocese, or a whole country even, for temporary
+reasons--what we call a dispensation."
+
+Don Joaquin had listened carefully. He was much more ignorant of
+ecclesiastical matters than his daughter. He had never occupied himself
+with considering the reasons behind ecclesiastical regulations, and much
+that he heard now came like entirely new knowledge. But he was Spaniard
+enough to understand logic very readily, and he did understand
+Mariquita.
+
+"So," he queried eagerly, "you think that even if such a marriage is
+against regulation" (he would not say "forbidden"), "there might be a
+dispensation?"
+
+"I do not see why there should not."
+
+"Of course, there is no reason," he said loftily, adding with ungracious
+ingratitude, "and it was extremely out of place for you to look shocked
+when I told you of my purpose."
+
+Mariquita accepted this further reproof meekly. Don Joaquin was only
+asserting his dignity, that had lain a little in abeyance while he was
+listening to her explanations.
+
+"I shall have to be away all to-morrow," he said, "on business. I do not
+wish you to say anything to Sarella till I give you permission."
+
+"Of course not."
+
+Don Joaquin was not addicted to telling fibs--except business ones; in
+selling a horse he regarded them as merely the floral ornaments of a
+bargain, which would have an almost indecent nakedness without them. But
+on this occasion he stooped to a moderate prevarication.
+
+"Sarella," he confidentially informed that lady, "I shall be up before
+sunrise and away the whole of to-morrow. Sometime the day after I shall
+have a good chance of telling Mariquita. Don't you hint anything to her
+meanwhile."
+
+"Not I," Sarella promised.
+
+("A hitch somewhere," she thought, feeling pretty sure that he had
+spoken to Mariquita already.)
+
+When Don Joaquin, after his return from Maxwell, spoke to Mariquita
+again, he once more condescended to some half-truthfulness--necessary,
+as he considered, to that great principle of diplomacy--the balance of
+power. A full and plain explanation of the exact position would, he
+thought, unduly exalt his daughter's wisdom and foresight at the expense
+of his own.
+
+"The priest," he informed her, "will, _of course_, be very pleased to
+marry Sarella and myself when we are ready. That will not be until she
+has been instructed and baptized. It will not be for a month or two."
+
+Mariquita offered her respectful congratulations both on Sarella's
+willingness to become a Catholic, and on the marriage itself. She was
+little given to asking questions, and was quite aware that her father
+had no wish to answer any in the present instance.
+
+Neither did he tell Sarella that a dispensation would be necessary;
+still less, that the priest believed the dispensation would have to be
+sought, through the Bishop, of course, from the Papal Delegate, and
+professed himself even uncertain whether the Papal Delegate himself
+might not refer to Rome before granting it, though he (the priest)
+thought it more probable that His Excellency would grant the
+dispensation without such reference.
+
+Don Joaquin merely gave Sarella to understand that their marriage would
+follow her reception into the Church, and that the necessary instruction
+previous to that reception would take some time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+As the marriage could not take place without delay, Don Joaquin did not
+wish it to be unreservedly announced; the general inhabitants of the
+range might guess what they chose, but they were not at present to be
+informed.
+
+"Mariquita may tell Gore," he explained to Sarella, "that is a family
+matter."
+
+"And I am sure she will not tell him unless you order her to," said
+Sarella; "she does not think of him in that light."
+
+"What light?" demanded Don Joaquin irritably.
+
+"As one of the family," Sarella replied, without any irritation at all.
+Her placidity of temper was likely to be one of her most convenient
+endowments.
+
+"I shall give her to understand," said Don Joaquin, "that there is no
+restriction on her informing Mr. Gore."
+
+Sarella shrugged her pretty shoulders and made no comment.
+
+Mariquita took her father's intimation as an order and obeyed, though
+surprised that he should not, if he desired Mr. Gore to know of his
+approaching marriage, tell him himself. Possibly, she thought, her
+father was a little shy about such a subject.
+
+Mr. Gore received her announcement quite coolly, without any
+manifestation of surprise. It had not, as Don Joaquin had hoped it
+might, the least effect of hurrying his own steps.
+
+"Am I," he inquired, "supposed to show that I have been told?"
+
+"Oh, I think so."
+
+So that night when they were alone, after the others had gone to their
+rooms, Gore congratulated his host.
+
+"Thank you! You see," said Don Joaquin, assuming a tone of pathos that
+sat most queerly on him, "as time goes on, I should be very lonely."
+
+He shook his head sadly, and Gore endeavored to look duly sympathetic.
+
+"Sarella," the older man proceeded, "could not stop here--if she were
+not my wife--after Mariquita had left us."
+
+Gore, who perfectly understood Mariquita's father and his diplomacy,
+would not indulge him by asking if his daughter were, then, likely to
+leave him.
+
+So Don Joaquin sighed and had to go on.
+
+"Yes! It would be very lonely for me, dependent as I am for society on
+Mariquita."
+
+Here Gore, with some inward amusement, could not refrain from accusing
+his possible father-in-law of some hypocrisy; for he was sure the
+elderly gentleman would miss his daughter as little as any father could
+miss his child.
+
+"Certainly," he said aloud, "it is hard to think how the range would get
+on without her."
+
+No doubt, her absence would be hard to fill in the matter of usefulness,
+and Gore was inclined to doubt whether Sarella would even wish to fill
+it. He was pretty sure that that young woman would refuse to work as her
+cousin had worked.
+
+"It _must_ get on without her," Don Joaquin agreed, not without doubt,
+"when her time comes for moving to a home of her own."
+
+Still Gore refused to "rise."
+
+"We must be prepared for that," Mariquita's father went on, refilling
+his pipe. "She is grown up. It is natural she should be thinking of her
+own future--"
+
+Gore suddenly felt angry with him, instead of being merely amused. To
+him it appeared a profanation of the very idea of Mariquita, to speak of
+her as indulging in surmises and calculations concerning her own
+matrimonial chances.
+
+"It would not," he said, "be unnatural--but I am sure her mind is given
+to no such thoughts."
+
+Don Joaquin slightly elevated his eyebrows.
+
+"I do not know," he said coldly, "how you can answer for what her mind
+is given to. I, at any rate, must have such thoughts on her account. I
+am not English. English parents may, perhaps, leave all such things to
+chance. We, of my people, are not so. To us it seems the most important
+of his duties for a father to trust to no chances, but arrange and
+provide for his daughter's settlement in life."
+
+Here the old fellow paused, and having shot his bolt, pretended it had
+been a mere parenthesis in answer to an implied criticism.
+
+"But," he continued, "I have wandered from what I was really explaining.
+I was telling that soon I should, in the natural course of things, be
+left here alone, as regards home companionship, unless I myself tried to
+find a mate, so I tried and I have succeeded."
+
+Here he bowed with great majesty and some complacence, as if he might
+have added, "Though you, in your raw youthfulness and conceit, may have
+thought me too old a suitor to win a lovely bride."
+
+Gore responded by the heartiest felicitations. "Sir," he added after a
+brief pause, "since it seems to me that you wish it, I will explain my
+own position. I can well afford to marry. And I would wish very much to
+marry. But there is only one lady whom I have ever met, whom I have now,
+or ever, felt that I would greatly desire to win for my wife."
+
+So far Don Joaquin had listened with an absolutely expressionless
+countenance of polite attention, though he had never been more
+interested.
+
+"The lady," Gore continued, "is your daughter."
+
+(Here that lady's father relaxed the aloofness of his manner, and
+permitted himself a look of benign, though not eager, approval.)
+
+"It may be," the young man went on, "that you have perceived my
+wishes...."
+
+(Don Joaquin would express neither negation nor assent.)
+
+"Anyway, you know them now. But your daughter does not know them. To
+thrust the knowledge of them prematurely upon her would, I am sure, make
+the chance of her responding to them very much less hopeful. Therefore I
+have been slow and cautious in endeavoring to gain even a special
+footing of friendship with her; I have, lately, gained a little. I
+cannot flatter myself that it is more than a little; between us there
+is on her side only the mere dawn of friendship. That being so, I should
+have been unwilling to speak to yourself--lest it should seem like
+assuming that she had any sort of interest in me beyond what I have
+explained. I speak now because you clearly expect that I should. Well, I
+have spoken. But I am so greatly in eager earnest about this that I ask
+you plainly to allow me to endeavor to proceed with what, I think, you
+almost resent as a timidity of caution. It is my only chance."
+
+Don Joaquin did not see that at all. If he were to inform Mariquita that
+Mr. Gore wished to become her husband and he, her father, wished her to
+become Mr. Gore's wife, he could not bring himself to picture such
+disobedience as any refusal on her part would amount to.
+
+"Our way," he said, "is more direct than your fanciful English way; it
+regards not a young girl's fanciful delays, and timid uncertainty, but
+her solid welfare, and therefore her solid happiness. In reality it gets
+over her maiden modesty in the best way--by wise authority. She does not
+have to tell herself baldly, 'I have become in love with this young
+man,' but 'My parents have found this young man worthy to undertake the
+charge of my life and my happiness, and I submit to their experience and
+wisdom.' Then duty will teach her love; a safer teacher than fancy."
+
+"I hope, sir," said Gore, "that you do not yourself propose that
+method."
+
+"And if I did?"
+
+"I would, though more earnestly desirous to win your daughter than I am
+desirous of anything in this life, tell you that I refuse to win her in
+that way. It never would win her."
+
+"'Win her'! She is all duty--"
+
+"Excuse me! No duty would command her to become my wife if she could
+only do so with repugnance. If you told her it was her duty I should
+tell her it was no such thing."
+
+Don Joaquin was amazed at such crass stupidity. He flung his open hands
+upwards with angry protest. He was even suspicious. Did the young man
+really _want_ to marry his daughter? It was much more evident that he
+was in earnest now, than it had been to Don Joaquin that he was in
+earnest before.
+
+The elderly half-breed had not the least idea of blaming his own crude
+diplomacy; on the contrary, he had been pluming himself on its success.
+For some time he had desired to obtain from Gore a definite expression
+of his wish to marry Mariquita, and he had obtained it. That it had been
+speedily followed by this further pronouncement, incomprehensible to the
+girl's father, was not _his_ fault, but was due entirely to the
+Englishman's peculiarities, peculiarities that to Don Joaquin seemed
+perverse and almost suspicious.
+
+"If you were a Spaniard," he said stiffly, "you would be grateful to me
+for being willing to influence my daughter in your favor."
+
+Gore knew that he must be disturbed, as it was his rule to speak of
+himself not as a Spaniard, but as an American.
+
+"I am grateful to you, sir, for being willing to let me hope to win your
+daughter for my wife--most grateful."
+
+"You do not appear grateful to me for my willingness to simplify
+matters."
+
+"They cannot be simplified--nor hurried. If your daughter can be brought
+to think favorably of me as one who earnestly desires to have the great,
+great honor and privilege of being the guardian of her life and its
+happiness, it must be gradually and by very gentle approaches. I hope
+that she already likes me, but I am sure she does not yet love me."
+
+"Before she has been asked to be your wife! Love you! Certainly not. She
+will love her husband, for that will be her duty."
+
+Gore did not feel at all like laughing; his future father-in-law's
+peculiarities seemed as perverse to him as his own did to Don Joaquin.
+He dreaded their operation; it seemed only too possible that Don Joaquin
+would be led to interference by them, and such interference he feared
+extremely; nor could he endure the idea of Mariquita's being dragooned
+by her father.
+
+"If," he declared stoutly, "you thrust prematurely upon your daughter
+the idea of me as her husband, you will make her detest the thought of
+me, and I never _shall_ be her husband."
+
+Don Joaquin was offended.
+
+"I am not used to do anything prematurely," he said grimly. "And it may
+be that I understand my daughter, who is of my own race, better than you
+who are not of her race."
+
+"It may be. But I am not certain that it is so. Sir, since you have
+twice alluded to that question of race, you must not be surprised or
+displeased if I remind you that she is as much of my race as of your
+own. Half Spanish she is, but half of English blood."
+
+Don Joaquin _was_ displeased, but all the same, he did feel that there
+might be something in Gore's argument. He had always thought of
+Mariquita as Spanish like himself; but he had never been unconscious
+that she was unlike himself--it might possibly be by reason of her
+half-English descent.
+
+"The lady," Gore went on, "whom you yourself are marrying, would perhaps
+understand me better than you appear to do."
+
+This reference to Sarella did not greatly conciliate her betrothed. He
+did not wish her to be occupied in understanding any young man. All the
+same, he was slightly flattered at Gore's having, apparently, a
+confidence in her judgment. Moreover, he knew that it was so late that
+this discussion could not be protracted much longer, and he was not
+willing to say anything like an admission that he had receded (which he
+had not) from his own opinion.
+
+"Her judgment," he said, "is good. And she has a maternal interest in
+Mariquita. I will tell her what you have said."
+
+Gore went to bed smiling to himself at the idea of Sarella's maternal
+interest. She did not strike him as a motherly young lady.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+Sarella found considerable enjoyment in the visits to Maxwell
+necessitated by her period of instruction. Each instruction was of
+reasonable length and left plenty of time for other affairs, and that
+time landed Don Joaquin in expenses he had been far from foreseeing.
+Sarella had a fund of mild obstinacy which her placidity of temper
+partly veiled. She intended that considerable additions to the furniture
+of the homestead should be made, and she did _not_ intend to get married
+without some considerable additions to her wardrobe as well. Her
+dresses, she assured Don Joaquin, were all too youthful. "Girl's
+clothes" she called them. She insisted on the necessity of now dressing
+as a matron. "Perhaps," she admitted with sweet ingenuousness, "I have
+dressed too young. One gets into a sort of groove. There was nothing to
+remind me that I had passed beyond the stage of school-girl frocks. But
+a married woman, unless she is a silly, must pull herself up, and adopt
+a matron's style; I would rather now dress a bit too old than too young.
+You don't want people to be saying you have married a flapper!"
+
+She got her own way, and Don Joaquin, had he known anything about it,
+might have discovered that matronly garments were more expensive than a
+girl's. "A girl," Sarella informed Mariquita, "need only be smart. A
+matron's dress must be handsome."
+
+To do her justice, Sarella tried to convince her lover that Mariquita
+also should be provided with new clothes; but he would agree only to one
+new "suit," as he called it, for his daughter to wear at his wedding. He
+had no idea of spending his own money on an extensive outfit "for
+another man's wife." That expense would be Gore's. Even in Sarella's
+case he would never have agreed to buy all she wanted had it been
+announced at once, but she was far too astute for any such mistake as
+that. It appeared that there must be some delay before their marriage,
+and she utilized it by spreading her gradual demands over as long a time
+as she could.
+
+Some of the expense, too, Don Joaquin managed to reduce by discovering a
+market he had hardly thought of till now, for the furs of animals he had
+himself shot; some of these animals were rather uncommon, some even
+rare, and he became aware of their commercial value only when bargaining
+for their making up into coats or cloaks for Sarella. His subsequent
+visits to this "store" in order to dispose of similar furs against a
+reduction in its charges for Sarella's clothing, he studiously concealed
+from her, but Sarella knew all about it.
+
+"Why," she said to herself, really admiring his sharpness, "the old boy
+is making a _profit_ on the bargain. He's getting more for his furs than
+he's spending."
+
+She was careful not to let him guess that she knew this; but she
+promised herself to "take it out in furniture." And she kept her
+promise. It was Sarella's principle that a person who did not keep
+promises made to herself would never keep those made to other people.
+
+"You really must," she told him, "have some of those furs made into a
+handsome winter jacket for Mariquita. They cost you nothing, and she
+must have a winter jacket. The one she has was got at the Convent--and a
+present, too, I believe. It was handsome once--and that shows how
+economical _good_ clothes are; they last so--"
+
+(Don Joaquin thought, "especially economical when they are presents.")
+
+"--But Mariquita has grown out of it. She is so tall. A new one made of
+cloth from the store would cost more than one for me, because she is so
+tall. But those furs cost you nothing."
+
+She knew he would not say, "No, but I can sell them."
+
+"Besides," she added, "if you offered them some more furs at the store
+they might take something off the charge of making and lining. It is
+often done. I'll ask them about it if you like."
+
+Don Joaquin did not at all desire her to do that.
+
+"No necessity," he said hastily; "Mariquita shall have the jacket. I
+will take the furs and give the order myself."
+
+"Only be sure to insist that the lining is silk. They have some silvery
+gray silk that would just go with those furs. And Mariquita would _pay_
+good dressing. Her style wants it. She's solid, you know."
+
+Mariquita did get the jacket. But it was not of the fur Sarella had
+meant--her father knew by that time the value of that sort of fur. And
+Sarella knew that she had made it quite clear which sort she had asked
+him to supply. She was amused by his craftiness, and though a little
+ashamed of him, she was readier to forgive his stinginess than if it had
+been illustrated in a garment for herself. After all, it was perhaps as
+well that Mariquita's should not be so valuable as her own.
+
+"And married women," she reminded herself, "do have to dress handsomer
+than girls. And Mariquita will never know the difference."
+
+"_I_ suggested," she told her cousin, "the same gray fur as mine. But I
+daresay a brown fur will suit your coloring better, and it's _younger_.
+Anything gray (in the fur line) can be worn with mourning, and nothing's
+so elderly as mourning."
+
+It was the first present her father had ever given Mariquita, and she
+thanked him with a warmth of gratefulness that ought to have made him
+ashamed. But Don Joaquin was not subject to the unpleasant consciousness
+of shame. On the contrary, he thought with less complacence of
+Mariquita's thanks than of the fact that he had given her a necessary
+winter garment at a profit--for he had taken the other furs to the store
+and received for them a substantial cash payment over and above the
+clearing of the charges for making up and lining the commoner skins of
+which the winter jacket was made.
+
+"I wonder," thought Sarella, "what that lining is? It looks silky, but
+I'm sure it isn't silk. I daresay it's warmer. And after all, Gore can
+get it changed for silk when it's worn out; the fur will outlast two
+linings at least. It's not so delicate as mine. I'm afraid mine'll
+_flatten_. I must look to that."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+Meanwhile the instructions did proceed, and Sarella did not mind them
+much. Perhaps she was not always attending very laboriously--she had a
+good deal to think of; but she listened with all due docility, and with
+quite reasonable, if not absorbed, interest; and by carefully abstaining
+from asking questions, did not often betray any misunderstanding of the
+nun's explanations, for it was by one of the nuns that all but the
+preliminary instructions were given. Sarella rather liked her, deciding
+that she was "a good sort," and, though neither young nor extremely
+attractive, she was "as kind as kind," and so intensely full of her
+subject that Sarella could not help gathering a higher appreciation of
+its importance. In Sarella the earnest expounder of Catholic doctrine
+and practice had no bigotry and not much prejudice to work against;
+only a thick crust of ignorance, and perhaps a thicker layer of natural
+indifference. The little she had heard about the Catholic Church was
+from Puritan neighbors in a very small town of a remote corner of New
+England, and if it had made any particular impression, must have been
+found unfavorable; but Sarella had been too little interested in
+religion to adopt its rancors, her whole disposition, easy,
+self-indulgent and material, being opposed to rancor as to all rough,
+sharp, and uncomfortable things.
+
+Perhaps the nun was hardly likely to overcome the indifference, and
+perhaps she knew it. But she prayed for Sarella much oftener than she
+talked to her, and had much more confidence in what Our Lord Himself
+might do for her than in anything that she could.
+
+"After all," she would urge, "it is more Your own business than mine. I
+did not make her, nor die for her. Master, do Your own work that I
+cannot."
+
+Besides, she, who had no belief in chance, would cheer herself by
+remembering that He had so ordered His patient providence as to bring
+the girl to the gate of the Church, by such ways as she was so far
+capable of. He had begun the work; He would not half do it. He would
+make it, the nun trusted, a double work. For in, half-obstinately,
+insisting that Sarella must become a Catholic before he married her, the
+old Spaniard, half-heathen by lifelong habit, had begun to awake to some
+sort at least of Catholic feeling, some beginning of Catholic practice,
+for now he was occasionally hearing Mass, and that first lethargic
+movement of a better spirit in him might, with God's blessing, would,
+lead to something more genuinely spiritual.
+
+The nun attributed those beginnings to the prayers of the old
+half-breed's daughter. As yet she knew her but little, but already, by
+the _discretio spiritum_, which is, after all, perhaps only another name
+for the clear instinct in things of grace earned by those who live by
+grace, the elderly nun, plain and simple, recognized in Mariquita one of
+a rare, unfettered spirituality.
+
+Sarella had not, at all events consciously, to herself, told her
+instructress much about her young cousin.
+
+"Oh, Mariquita!" she had said, not ill-naturedly, "she lives up in the
+moon."
+
+("Higher up than that, I expect," thought Sister Aquinas, gathering the
+impression that Mariquita was not held of much account in the family.)
+
+"But she is not an idler?" said the nun.
+
+"Oh, not a bit," Sarella agreed with perfectly ungrudging honesty. "An
+idler! No; she works a lot harder than she ought; harder than she would
+if I had the arranging of things. Not quite so hard as she used, though,
+for I have made her father get some help, and he will have to get more
+if Mariquita leaves us."
+
+Perceiving that the nun did not smile, but retreated into what Sarella
+called her "inside expression," that acute young woman guessed that she
+might have conveyed the idea that her future stepdaughter was to be sent
+away on her father's marriage.
+
+"There's always," she explained carelessly, "the chance of her marrying.
+She is handsome in her own way, and I don't think she need remain long
+unmarried if she chose to marry. Not that _she_ ever thinks of it."
+
+("I expect not," thought Sister Aquinas.)
+
+This was about as near to gossip as they ever got. Sarella, indeed,
+would have liked the nun better if she had been "more chatty." I don't
+know that Sister Aquinas really disliked chat so long as it wasn't
+gossip, but the truth was, she did not find the time allowed for each
+instruction at all superfluously long, and did not wish to let it slip
+away in mere talk.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+It was only occasionally that Mariquita accompanied Sarella when the
+latter went to the convent for instruction. On one of those occasions
+the Loretto Convent near Denver was mentioned, and Sister Aquinas said:
+
+"I had a niece there a few years ago--Eleanor Hurst. I wonder if you
+know her?"
+
+"Oh, yes! Quite well." Mariquita answered, with the sort of shining
+interest that always made her look suddenly younger. "A friend of ours
+brought me news, lately, that she has become a Carmelite."
+
+"What is a Carmelite?" Sarella asked.
+
+"A nun of one of the great Contemplative Orders," Sister Aquinas
+explained, turning politely to Sarella. "It is a much rarer vocation
+than that of active nuns, like ourselves. Carmelites do not teach
+school, or have orphanages, or homes for broken old men or women, nor
+nurse the sick, either in their homes or in hospital."
+
+"Sounds pretty useless," Sarella remarked carelessly; "what do they do
+anyway?"
+
+"They are not at all useless," the nun answered, smiling good-humoredly.
+"Married women are not useless, though they do not do any of those
+things either."
+
+"Of course not. But they _are_ married. They make their husbands
+comfortable--"
+
+The nun could not help taking her own turn of interrupting, and said
+with a little laugh:
+
+"Not quite always, perhaps."
+
+"The good ones do."
+
+"Perhaps not invariably. Some even pious women are not remarkable for
+making their husbands comfortable."
+
+Sarella laughed, and the elderly nun went on.
+
+"Of course, it is the vocation of married women to do as you say. And I
+hope most do it, that and setting the example of happy Christian homes.
+I do not really mean to judge of the vocation by those who fail to
+fulfill it. It is God's vocation for the vast majority of His daughters.
+But not for all."
+
+"There aren't husbands enough for all of us," Sarella, who was
+"practical" and slightly statistical, remarked, with the complacence of
+one for whom a husband had been forthcoming.
+
+"Exactly," agreed the elderly nun, laughing cheerfully, "so it's a good
+thing, you see, that there are other vocations; ours, for instance."
+
+"Oh," Sarella protested with hasty politeness, "no one could think
+people like you useless. You do so much good."
+
+"So do the Carmelites. Only their way of it is not quite the same. Would
+you say that Shakespeare was useless, or Dante?"
+
+To tell truth, Sarella had never in her life said anything about either,
+or thought anything. Nevertheless, she was aware that they were
+considered important.
+
+"They did not," the nun said eagerly, "teach schools, or nurse the sick,
+or do any of those things for the sake of which some people kindly
+forgive us for being nuns--not all people, unfortunately. Yet they are
+recognized as not having been useless. They are not useless now, long
+after they are dead. Mankind admits its debt to them. They _served_, and
+they serve still. Not with physical service, like nurses, or doctors, or
+cooks, or house-servants. But they contributed to the _quality_ of the
+human race. So have many great men and women who never wrote a
+line--Joan of Arc, for instance. The contribution of those illustrious
+servants was eminent and famous, but many who have never been famous,
+who never have been known, have contributed in a different degree or
+fashion to the quality of mankind: innumerable priests, unknown perhaps
+outside their parishes; innumerable nuns, innumerable wives and mothers;
+and a Carmelite nun so contributes, eminently, immeasurably except by
+God, though invisibly, and inaudibly. Not only by her prayers, I mean
+her prayers of intercession, though again it is only God who can measure
+what she does by them. But just by being what she is, vast, unknown
+numbers of people are brought into the Catholic Church not only by her
+prayers but by her life. Some read themselves into the true faith, into
+_any_ faith; they are very few in comparison of those who come to
+believe. Some are preached into the Church--a few only, again, compared
+with the number of those who do come to her. What brings most of those
+who are brought? I believe it is a certain quality that they have become
+aware of in the Catholic Church, that brings the immense majority. The
+young man in the factory, or in the army, in a ship, or on a
+ranch--anywhere--falls into companionship with a Catholic, or with a
+group of Catholics; and in him, or them, he gradually perceives this
+_quality_ which he has never perceived elsewhere. It may be that the
+Catholics he has come to know are not perfect at all. The quality is not
+all of their own earning; it is partly an inheritance: some of it from
+their mothers, some from their sisters, some from their friends; ever so
+much of it from the saints, who contributed it to the air of the Church
+that Catholics breathe. The Contemplatives are contributing it every
+day, and all day long. Each, in her case, behind her grille, is forever
+giving something immeasurable, except by God, to the transcendent
+quality of the Catholic Church. This may be, and mostly is, unsuspected
+by almost all her fellow-creatures; but not unfelt by quite all. A
+Carmelite's convent is mostly in a great city; countless human beings
+pass its walls. They cannot _help_, seeing them, saying to their own
+hearts, 'In there, human creatures, like me, are living unlike me. They
+have given up _everything_--and for no possible reward _here_. Ambition
+cannot account for _any part of it even_. They cannot become anything
+great even in their Church, nor famous; they will die as little known or
+regarded as they live. They can win no popularity. They obtain no
+applause. They are called useless for their pains. They are scolded for
+doing what they do, though they would not be scolded if they were mere
+old-maids who pampered and indulged only themselves. The wicked women of
+this city are less decried than they. They are abused, and they have to
+be content to be abused, remembering that their Master said they must
+be content to fare no better than Himself. It is something above this
+world, that can only be accounted for by another world, and such a
+belief in it as is not proved by those who may try to grab two worlds,
+this one with their right hands, the next with their left. The life
+almost all of us declare impossible here on earth, they are living.'
+Such thoughts as these, broken thoughts, hit full in the face numbers of
+passers-by every day, and how many days are there not in a year--in a
+Carmelite's own lifetime. They are witnesses to Jesus Christ, who cannot
+be explained away. A chaplain told me that nothing pleased his soldiers
+so much as to get him in the midst of a group of them and say, 'Tell us
+about the nuns, Father. Tell us about the Carmelites and the Poor
+Clares--'"
+
+"I knew a girl called Clare," Sarella commented brightly; "she was as
+poor as a church mouse, but she married a widower with no children and a
+_huge_ fortune. I beg your pardon--but the name reminded me of her."
+
+Sister Aquinas laughed gently.
+
+"Well, she was a useful friend to you!"
+
+"Not at all. She never did a hand's turn for anyone. I don't know what
+she would have done if she _hadn't_ married a rich man, she was so
+helpless. But you were saying?"
+
+"Only, that his soldiers loved to hear the chaplain tell them about the
+Contemplative nuns. Nothing interested them more. I am sure it was not
+thrown away on them. It was like showing them a high and lovely place. I
+should think no one can look at a splendid white mountain and not want
+to be climbing. That was all."
+
+Would Sarella ever want to climb? Sister Aquinas did not know, nor do I
+know.
+
+Her eagerness had been, perhaps, partly spurred by other criticism than
+Sarella's; Sarella was not the only one who had told Nelly Hurst's aunt
+that it was a pity the girl had "decided on one of the useless Orders."
+
+That every phase of life approved by the Catholic Church, as the
+Contemplative Orders are, must be useful, Sister Aquinas knew well. And
+it wounded her to hear her niece's high choice belittled. She could not
+help knowing that this belittling was simply a naive confession of
+materialism, and an equally naive expression of human selfishness. We
+approve the vocation of nuns whose work is for our own bodies; we cannot
+easily see the splendor of _direct_ service of God Himself who has no
+material needs of His own. That God's most usual course of Providence
+calls us to serve Him by serving our fellows, we see clearly enough,
+because it suits us to see it; but we are too purblind to perceive that
+even that Service need not in every case be material service, and it
+scandalizes us to remember that God chooses in some instance to be
+served _directly_, not by the service of any creature; because the
+instances are less common, we are shocked when asked to admit that they
+exist. If Christ were still visibly on earth, millions would be
+delighted to feed Him, but it would annoy almost all of us to see even a
+few serving Him by sitting idle at His feet listening. Hardly any of us
+but think Martha was doing more that afternoon at Bethany than her
+sister, and it troubles us that Jesus Christ thought differently. It
+was so easy to sit still and listen--that is why the huge majority of us
+find it impossible, and are angry that here and there a Contemplative
+nun wants to do it.
+
+Of liberty we prattle in every language; and most loudly do they scream
+of it who are most angry that God takes leave to exist, and that many of
+His creatures still refuse to deny His existence; that many admit His
+right to command, and their own obligation to obey. These
+liberty-brawlers would be the first to concede to every woman the
+"inalienable right" to lead a corrupt life, destructive of society, and
+the last to allow to a handful of women out of the world's population
+the right to live a life of spotless whiteness at the immediate feet of
+the Master they love.
+
+Was Sister Aquinas so carried away as to be forgetful that Sarella was
+not the only auditor? Mariquita had listened too.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+
+During these weeks of Sarella's instruction she achieved something which
+to her seemed a greater triumph than her succession of cumulative
+triumphs in the matters of trousseau and of furniture. She persuaded Don
+Joaquin to buy a motor-car!
+
+She would not have succeeded in this attempt but for certain
+circumstances which in reality robbed her success of some of its
+triumph. In the first place, the machine was not a new one; in the
+second, Don Joaquin took it instead of a debt which he did not think
+likely to be paid. Then also he had arrived at the conclusion that so
+many long rides as Sarella's frequent journeys to Maxwell involved, were
+likely to prove costly. They took a good deal out of the horses, even
+without accidents occurring, and an accident had nearly occurred which
+would have very largely reduced the value of one of the best of his
+horses--the one, as it happened, best fitted for carrying a lady.
+Sarella all but let the horse down on a piece of ragged, stony road: Don
+Joaquin being himself at her elbow and watchful, had just succeeded in
+averting the accident; but lover as he was, he was able to see that
+Sarella would never be a horse-woman. She disliked riding, and he was
+not such a tyrant as to insist on her doing a thing she never would do
+well, and had no pleasure in doing. On the whole, he made up his mind
+that it would be more economical to take this second-hand car in
+settlement of a bad debt than continue running frequent risks of injury
+to his horses.
+
+The acquisition of the car made it possible to shorten the period of
+these journeys to Maxwell; it did not require a night's rest, and the
+trip itself was much more rapidly accomplished.
+
+The period of Sarella's instruction was not one of idleness on Gore's
+part, in reference to Mariquita. It seemed to him that he really was
+making some advance. He saw much more of her than used to be the case.
+She was now accustomed to chance meetings with him, or what she took for
+chance meetings, and did not make hasty escape from them, or treat him
+during them with reserve. They were, in fact, friends and almost
+confidential friends; but if Gore had continued as wise as he had been
+when discussing the situation with her father, he would have been able
+to see that it did not amount to more than that; that they were friends
+indeed because Mariquita was wholly free from any suspicion that more
+than that could come of it. She had simply come to a settled opinion
+that he was nice, a kind man, immensely pleasanter as a companion than
+any man she had known before, a trustworthy friend who could tell her of
+much whereof she had been ignorant. She began in a fashion to know "his
+people," too; and he saw with extreme pleasure that she was interested
+in them. That was natural enough. She knew almost nobody; as a grown-up
+woman, had really known none of her own sex till Sarella came; it would
+have been strange if she had not heard with interest about women whose
+portraits were so affectionately drawn for her, who, she could easily
+discern, were pleasant and refined, cheerful, bright, amusing, and kind,
+too; cordial, friendly people.
+
+All the same, Gore's talk of his family did connote a great advance in
+intimacy with Mariquita. He seemed to assume that she might know them
+herself, and she gathered the notion that when he had bought a range,
+some of them would come out and live with him, so that she said nothing
+to contradict a possibility that he had after all only implied. Gore,
+meanwhile, with no suspicion of her idea that his sisters might come out
+to visit him, and noting with great satisfaction that she never
+contradicted his hints and hopes that they might all meet, attached more
+importance to it than he ought. Perhaps he built more hope on this than
+on any one thing besides. He was fully aware that in all their
+intercourse there was no breath of flirtation. But he could not picture
+Mariquita flirting, and did not want to picture it. Meanwhile their
+intercourse was daily growing to an intimacy, or he took it for such.
+He did not sufficiently weigh the fact that of herself she said little.
+She was most ready to be interested in all he told her of himself, his
+previous life, his friends; but of her own real life, which was inward
+and apart from the few events of her experience, she did not speak. This
+did not strike him as reserve, for those who show a warm, friendly
+interest in others do not seem reserved.
+
+Gore never startled her by gallantry or compliments; his sympathy and
+admiration were too respectful for compliment, and a certain instinct
+warned him that gallantry would have perplexed and disconcerted her.
+
+None the less, he believed that he was making progress, and the course
+of it was full of beautiful and happy moments. So things went on, with,
+as Gore thought, sure though not rapid pace. He was too much in earnest
+to risk haste, and also too happy in the present to make blundering
+clutches at the future. Then with brutal suddenness Don Joaquin
+intervened.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+
+He met his daughter and Gore returning to the homestead, Mariquita's
+face bright with friendly interest in all that Gore had been telling
+her, and the young man's certainly not less happy. Don Joaquin was out
+of temper; Sarella and he had had an economic difference and he had been
+aware that she had deceived him.
+
+He barely returned Gore's and Mariquita's greeting, and his brow was
+black. It was not till some time later that he and Gore found themselves
+alone together. Then he said ill-humoredly:
+
+"You and Mariquita were riding this afternoon--a good while, I think."
+
+"It did not seem long to _me_, as you can understand," Gore replied
+smiling, and anxious to ignore the old fellow's bad temper.
+
+"Perhaps it does not seem long to you since you began to speak of
+marrying my daughter."
+
+"I did not begin to speak of it. I should have preferred to hold my
+tongue till I could feel I had some right to speak of it. It was you,
+sir, who began."
+
+"And that was a long time ago. Have you yet made my daughter understand
+you?"
+
+"I cannot be sure yet."
+
+"But I must be sure. To-morrow I shall see that she understands."
+
+Gore was aghast.
+
+"I earnestly beg you to abstain from doing that," he begged, too anxious
+to prevent Don Joaquin's interference to risk precipitating it by
+showing the anger he felt.
+
+"Perhaps you no longer wish to marry her. If so, it would be advisable
+to reduce your intercourse to common civilities--"
+
+"Sir," Gore interrupted, "I cannot allow you to go on putting any case
+founded on such an assumption as that of my no longer wishing to marry
+your daughter. I wish it more every day ..."
+
+The young man had a right to be angry, and he was angry, and perhaps was
+not unwilling to show it. But it was necessary that he should for every
+reason be moderate in letting his resentment appear. To have a loud
+quarrel with a prospective father-in-law is seldom a measure likely to
+help the suitor's wishes.
+
+He in his turn was interrupted.
+
+"Then," said Don Joaquin, "it is time you told her so."
+
+"I do not think so. I think it's _not_ time, and that to tell her so now
+would greatly injure my chance of success."
+
+"I will answer for your success. I shall myself speak to her. I shall
+tell her that you wish to marry her, and that I have, some time ago,
+given my full consent."
+
+Gore was well aware that Don Joaquin could not "answer for his success."
+It was horrible to him to think of Mariquita being bullied, and he was
+sure that her father intended to bully her. Anything would be better
+than that. He was intensely earnest in his wish to succeed; it was that
+earnestness that made him willing to be patient; but he was, if
+possible, even more intensely determined that the poor girl should not
+be tormented and dragooned by her tyrannical father. That, he would
+risk a great deal to prevent, as far as his own power went.
+
+"I most earnestly beg you not to do that," he said in a very low voice.
+
+"But I intend to do it. If you choose to say that you do not, after all,
+wish to marry her, then I will merely suggest that you should leave us."
+
+"I have just told you the exact contrary--"
+
+"Then, I shall tell Mariquita so to-morrow, stating that your proposal
+meets with my full consent, and that in view of her prolonged intimacy
+with you, her consent is taken by me for granted. I do take it for
+granted."
+
+"I wish I could. But I cannot. Sir, I still entreat you to abandon this
+intention of yours."
+
+"Only on condition that you make the proposal yourself without any
+further delay."
+
+From this decision the obstinate old father would not recede. The
+discussion continued for some time, but he seemed to grow only more
+fixed in his intention, and certainly he became more acerbated in
+temper. Gore was sure that if he were allowed to take up the matter with
+his daughter, it would be with even more harshly dictatorial tyranny
+than had seemed probable at first.
+
+Finally Gore promised that he would himself propose to Mariquita in form
+on the morrow, Don Joaquin being with difficulty induced to undertake on
+his side that he would not "prepare" her for what was coming. He gave
+this promise quite as reluctantly as Gore gave his. The younger man
+dreaded the bad effects of precipitancy; the elder, who had plenty of
+self-conceit behind his dry dignity, relinquished very unwillingly the
+advantages he counted upon from his diplomacy, and the weight of his
+authority being known beforehand to be on the suitor's side. If Gore
+were really so uncertain of success, it would be a feather in the
+paternal cap to have insured that success by his solemn indications of
+approval. But he saw that without his promise of absolute abstention
+from interference, Gore would not agree to make his proposal, so Don
+Joaquin ungraciously yielded the point perhaps chiefly because important
+business called him away from the morrow's dawn till late at night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+
+After breakfast next morning Sarella, not quite accidentally, found
+herself alone with Gore.
+
+"You gentlemen," she said, "did go to bed sometime, I suppose. But I
+thought you never _were_ going to stop your talk--and to tell you the
+truth, I wished my bedroom was farther away, or had a thicker wall. _I_
+go to bed to sleep. You were at it two hours and twenty minutes."
+
+Gore duly apologized for the postponement of her sleep, and wondered
+_how_ thin the wooden partition might be between her room and that in
+which the long discussion had taken place.
+
+"These partitions of thin boarding are wretched," she informed him,
+"especially as they are only stained. If they were even papered it would
+prevent the tobacco-smoke coming through the cracks where the boards
+have shrunk." Gore could not help smiling.
+
+"I think," he said, "you want to let me know that our talk was not quite
+inaudible."
+
+"No, it wasn't. Not quite. I'll tell you how much was audible. That you
+were talking about Mariquita, and that you were arguing, and I think you
+were both angry. I am sure _he_ was."
+
+"So was I; though not so loud, I hope."
+
+"Look here, Mr. Gore. You weren't loud at all. But I knew you were
+angry. And so you ought to have been. Why on earth can't he keep his
+fingers out of the pot? You and Mariquita didn't interfere in his love
+affair, and he'll do no good interfering in yours."
+
+Gore laughed.
+
+"So you heard it all!" he said.
+
+"No. If you had talked as loud as he did I should. But you didn't. It
+was easy to hear him say that to-morrow he would go and order Mariquita
+to marry you. If that had been the end of it, I just believe I should
+have dressed myself and come in to tell him not to be silly. But it
+wasn't the end. Was it?"
+
+"No. To stop _that_ plan I promised I would propose to Mariquita
+to-day--only he was to say nothing about it to her first."
+
+"Well, then, I don't know as he has done any harm. You might do worse."
+
+"I might do better."
+
+"What better?"
+
+"Wait a bit."
+
+"I'm not so sure. I don't know that any _harm_ would come of waiting a
+bit, and I daresay it's all very pleasant meanwhile. But you can go on
+with your love-making after you're engaged just as well as before."
+
+"Ah! If we _were_ engaged!"
+
+"Pfush!" quoth Sarella, inventing a word which stood her in stead of
+"Pshaw."
+
+Gore had to laugh again, and no doubt her good-natured certainty
+encouraged him--albeit he did not believe she knew Mariquita.
+
+"What o'clock shall you propose?" she inquired coolly.
+
+Of course he could not tell her.
+
+"I guess," she said, "it will be between two and three. Dinner at
+twelve. Digestion and preliminaries, 12:45 to 1:45. Proposal 2:45 say.
+You will be engaged by 2:50."
+
+As before, Gore liked the encouragement though very largely discounting
+its worth.
+
+"On the whole," Sarella observed, "I daresay my old man has done
+good--as he has made himself scarce. If he hadn't threatened to put his
+own foot in it, you might have gone on staring up at Mariquita in the
+stars till she was forty, and then it might have struck you that you
+could get on fine without her."
+
+Sarella evidently thought that nothing was to be done before the time
+she had indicated; during the morning she was in evidence as usual, but
+immediately after dinner she retreated to her studies, and was seen no
+more for a long time.
+
+Gore boldly announced his intention to be idle and told Mariquita she
+must be idle too, begging her to ride with him. To himself it seemed as
+if everyone about the place must see that something was in the wind; but
+the truth was that everyone had been so long expecting something
+definite to happen without hearing of it, that some of them had decided
+that Gore and Mariquita had fixed up their engagement already at some
+unsuspected moment, and the rest had almost ceased to expect to hear
+anything.
+
+As to Mariquita, she was clearly unsuspicious that this afternoon was to
+have any special significance for her. Always cheerful and
+unembarrassed, she was exactly her usual self, untroubled by the
+faintest presentiment of fateful events. Her ready agreement to Gore's
+proposal that they should ride together was, he knew well, of no real
+good omen. It made him have a guilty feeling, as if he were getting her
+out under false pretences.
+
+There was so happy a light of perfect, confiding friendliness upon her
+face that it seemed almost impossible to cloud it by the suggestion of
+anything that would be different from simple friendship. But must it be
+clouded by such a suggestion? "Clouding" means darkening; was it really
+impossible for that light, so trusting and so contented, of
+unquestioning friendship, to be changed without being rendered less
+bright? Must Gore assume her to be specially incapable of an affection
+deeper than even friendship? No; of anything good she was capable; no
+depths of love could be beyond her, and he was sure that her nature was
+one of deep affectionateness, left unclaimed till now. The real
+loneliness of her life, he told himself, had lain in this very depth of
+unclaimed lovingness. And he told himself, too, not untruly, that she
+had been less lonely of late.
+
+Gore might, he felt, hope to awake all that dormant treasure of
+affection--if he had time! But he had no longer time. He did truly,
+though not altogether, shrink from the task he had set himself to-day.
+He had a genuine reluctance to risk spoiling that happy content of hers;
+yet he could not say it was worse than a risk. There was the counter
+possibility of that happy content changing into something lovelier.
+
+That she was not incapable of love he told himself with full assurance,
+and he was half-disposed to believe that she was one who would never
+love till asked for her love.
+
+Sarella might be nearer right than he had been. She was of much coarser
+fibre than Mariquita, and perhaps he had made too much of that, for she
+was a woman at all events, and shrewd, watchful and a looker-on with the
+proverbial advantages (maybe) over the actors themselves. Sarella knew
+how Mariquita spoke of him, though he did not believe that between the
+two cousins there had been confidences about himself; not real
+confidences, though Sarella was just the girl to "chaff" Mariquita about
+himself, and would know how her chaff had been taken. At all events, Don
+Joaquin must be forestalled; his blundering interference must be
+prevented, and it could only be prevented by Gore keeping his word and
+speaking himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+
+He had kept his word, and had spoken. They had been out together a long
+time when the opportunity came; they had dismounted, and the horses were
+resting. He and she were sitting in the shade of a small group of trees,
+to two of which the horses were tied. Their talk had turned naturally,
+and with scarcely any purposeful guidance of his, in a direction that
+helped him. And Mariquita talked with frank unreserve; she felt at home
+with him now, and her natural silence had long before now been melted by
+his sincerity; her silence of habit was _chiefly_ habit, due not to
+distrust nor a guarded prudence, but to the much simpler fact that till
+his arrival, she had never since her home-coming been called upon to
+speak in any real sense by anyone who cared to hear her, or who had an
+interest in what she might have to say.
+
+His proposal did not come with the least abruptness, but it was clear
+and unmistakeable when it came, and she understood--Mariquita could
+understand a plain meaning as well as anyone. She did not interrupt, nor
+avert her gaze. Indeed, she turned her eyes, which had been looking far
+away across the lovely, empty prairie to the horizon, to him as he
+spoke, and her hands ceased their idle pulling at the grass beside her.
+In her eyes, as she listened, there was a singular shining, and
+presently they held a glistening like the dew in early morning flowers.
+
+Gore had not moved any nearer to her, nor did he as he ceased. One hand
+of hers she moved nearer to him, now, though not so as to touch him.
+
+"That is what you want?" she said. "Is that what you have been wanting
+all the time?"
+
+Her voice was rather low, but most clear, and it had no reproach.
+
+"Yes. What can you say to me?"
+
+"I can only say how grateful it makes me."
+
+Her words almost astonished him. Though he might have known that she
+must say only exactly what was in her mind. They conveyed in themselves
+no refusal, but he knew at once there was no hope for him in them.
+
+"Grateful!" He exclaimed. "As if I could help it!"
+
+"And as if I could help being grateful. It is so great a thing! For you
+to wish that. There could be nothing greater. I can never forget it. You
+must never think that I could forget it ... I--you know, Mr. Gore, that
+I am not like most girls, being so very ignorant. I have never read a
+novel. Even the nuns told me that some of them are beautiful and not bad
+at all, but the contrary. Only, I have never read any. I know they are
+full of this matter--love and marriage. They are great things, and
+concern nearly all the men and women in the world, but not quite all. I
+do not think I ever said to myself, 'They don't concern _you_.' I do not
+think I ever thought about it, but if I had, I believe I should have
+known that that matter would never concern me. Yet I do not want you to
+misunderstand--Oh, if I could make you understand, please! I know that
+it is a great thing, love and marriage, God's way for most men and
+women. And I think it a wonderful, great thing that a man should wish
+that for himself and me; should think that with me he could be happier
+than in any other way. Of course, I never thought anyone would feel
+that. It is a thing to thank you for, and always I shall thank you...."
+
+"Is it impossible?"
+
+She paused an infinitesimal moment and said:
+
+"Just that. Impossible."
+
+"Would it be fair to ask why 'impossible'?"
+
+"Not unfair at all. But perhaps I cannot answer. I will try to answer.
+When you told me what you wanted it pleased me because you wanted it,
+and it hurt me because I (who had never thought about it before) knew at
+once that it was not possible to do what you wanted, and I would so much
+rather be able to please you."
+
+"You will never be able to do anything else but please me. Your refusing
+cannot change your being yourself."
+
+Gore could not worry her with demands for reasons. He knew there was no
+one else. He knew she was not incapable of loving--for he knew, better
+than ever, that she loved greatly and deeply all whom she knew. Nay, he
+knew that she loved _him_, among them, but more than any of them. And
+yet he saw that she was simply right. What he had asked was "impossible,
+just that." Better than himself she would love no one, and in the
+fashion of a wife she would love no one, ever.
+
+Yet, he asked her a question, not to harry her but because of her
+father. "Perhaps you have resolved never to marry," he said.
+
+"I never thought of it. But, as soon as I knew what you were saying, I
+knew I should never marry anyone. It was not a resolution. It was just a
+certainty. Alas! our resolutions are not certainties."
+
+"But," Gore said gently, feeling it necessary to prepare her, "your
+father may wish you to marry."
+
+She paused, dubiously, and her brown skin reddened a little.
+
+"You think so? Yes, he may," she answered in a troubled voice; for she
+feared her father, more even than she was conscious of.
+
+"I think he does," Gore said, not watching the poor girl's troubled
+face.
+
+"He wants me to marry you?" she inquired anxiously.
+
+"I am afraid so; ever since he made up his mind. I do not think he liked
+the idea of letting you marry me till long after he saw what I hoped
+for. You see, I began to hope for it from the very first--from the day
+when we first met, by the river. He did not like me then; he did not
+know whether to approve of me or not. And at first he was inclined to
+approve all the less because he saw I wanted to win you for myself. I
+don't know that he likes me much even now; but he approves, and he
+approves of my plan. You know that once he has made up his mind to
+approve a plan, he likes it more and more. He gets determined and
+obstinate about it."
+
+"Yes. He will be angry."
+
+"I am afraid so. But--it is because he thinks it a father's duty to
+arrange for his daughter's future, and this plan suited him."
+
+"Oh, yes! I know he is a good man. He will feel he is right in being
+angry."
+
+"But I don't. He will be wrong. Though he is your father, he has not the
+right to try and force you to do what you say is impossible."
+
+"Yes," she said gently, "it is impossible. But I shall not be able to
+make him see that."
+
+"I see it. And it concerns me more than it concerns him."
+
+"You are more kind than anyone I ever heard of," she told him. "I never
+dared to hope you would come to see that--that it is impossible."
+
+"Can you tell him why?"
+
+"Perhaps I do not quite understand you."
+
+"It seems a long time ago, now, to me since I asked you if you could
+come to love me and be my wife. Everything seems changed and different.
+I wonder if I could guess why you knew instantly that it was
+impossible. It might help you with your father."
+
+Mariquita listened, and gave no prohibition.
+
+"I think," he said, "you knew it was impossible, because my words taught
+you, if you did not know already, that you could be no man's wife--"
+
+"Oh, yes! That is true."
+
+"But perhaps they taught you also something else, which you may not have
+known before--that you could belong only to God."
+
+"I have known that always," she answered simply.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+
+When Don Joaquin returned, he was in an unusually bad temper, and it was
+well that Mariquita had gone to bed. Gore was sitting up, and, though it
+was long past Sarella's usual hour, she had insisted on sitting up also.
+This was good-natured of her, for there was no pleasure to be
+anticipated from the interview with Don Joaquin, and she disliked any
+derangement of her habits. Gore had begged her to retire at her ordinary
+hour, but she had flatly refused.
+
+"I can do more with him than you can," she declared, quite truly,
+"though no one will be able to stop his being as savage as a bear. I'm
+sorry for Mariquita; she'll have a bad time to-morrow, and it won't end
+with to-morrow."
+
+Meanwhile she took the trouble to have ready a good supper for Don
+Joaquin, and made rather a special toilette in which to help him to it.
+Sarella was not in the least afraid of him, and had no great dread of a
+row which concerned someone else. Don Joaquin was not, however,
+particularly mollified by the becoming dress, nor by finding his
+betrothed sitting up for him, as she was sitting up with Gore.
+
+"Where's Mariquita?" he asked, as he sat down to eat.
+
+"In bed long ago. I hope you'll like that chicken; it's done in a
+special way we have, and the recipe's my patent. I haven't taught it to
+Mariquita."
+
+"Why aren't _you_ in bed?"
+
+"Because I preferred waiting to see you safe at home," Sarella replied
+with an entrancing smile.
+
+"Was Mr. Gore anxious too?" Don Joaquin demanded sarcastically.
+
+"It is not a quarter of an hour later than my usual time for going to
+bed," Gore answered. "And I thought it better to see you; you would, I
+believe, have _expected_ to see me."
+
+"Very well. You have done as you said?"
+
+"Yes." Gore glanced at Sarella, and Don Joaquin told her that she had
+now better sit up no longer.
+
+"_I_ think I had," she told him; "I know all about it."
+
+"Is it all settled?" Don Joaquin asked, looking at Gore. "Have you fixed
+it up?"
+
+Gore found this abruptness and haste made his task very difficult.
+
+He had to consider how to form his reply.
+
+"He proposed to Mariquita," Sarella cut in, "but she refused him."
+
+"Refused him!" Don Joaquin almost shouted.
+
+"Unfortunately, it is so," Gore was beginning, but his host interrupted
+him.
+
+"I do not choose she should refuse," he said angrily. "I will tell her
+so before you see her in the morning."
+
+Gore was angry himself, and rose from his seat.
+
+"No," he said; "I will not agree to that. She knows her own mind, and it
+will not change. You must not persecute her on my account."
+
+"It is not on your account. I choose to have duty and obedience from my
+own daughter."
+
+"Joaquin," said Sarella (Gore had never before heard her call him by his
+Christian name), "it is no use taking it that way. Mariquita is not
+undutiful, and you must know it. But she will not marry Mr. Gore--or
+anybody."
+
+"Of course she will marry," cried the poor girl's father fiercely. "That
+is the duty of every girl."
+
+Sarella slightly smiled.
+
+"Then many girls do not do their duty," she said, in her even,
+unimpassioned tones.
+
+Her elderly _fiancé_ was about to burst into another explosion, but she
+would not let him.
+
+"Many Catholic girls," she reminded him, "remain unmarried."
+
+"To be nuns--that is different."
+
+"It is my belief," she observed in a detached manner, as if indulging in
+a mere surmise, "that Mariquita will be a nun."
+
+"Mariquita! Has she said so?" he demanded sharply.
+
+"Not to me," Sarella replied, quite unconcernedly.
+
+"Nor to me," Gore explained; "nevertheless, I believe it will be so."
+
+"That depends on _me_," the girl's father asserted with an unpleasant
+mixture of annoyance and obstinacy. "I intend her to marry."
+
+"Only a Protestant," said Sarella, with a shrewd understanding of Don
+Joaquin that surprised Gore, "would marry her if she believes she has a
+vocation to be a nun. I should think a Catholic man would be ashamed to
+do it. He would expect a judgment on himself and his children."
+
+Don Joaquin was as angry as ever, as savage as ever, but he was
+startled. Both his companions could see this. Gore was astonished at
+Sarella's speech, and at her acumen. He had wished to have this
+interview with Mariquita's father to himself, but already saw that
+Sarella knew how to conduct it better than he did. She had clearly been
+quite willing that "the old man" (as he disrespectfully called him in
+his own mind) should fly out and give way to his fiery temper at once;
+the more of it went off now, the less would remain for poor Mariquita to
+endure.
+
+"If I were a Catholic man," Sarella continued cooly, "I should think it
+_profane_ to make a girl marry me who had given herself to be a nun. I
+expect the Lord would punish it." She paused meditatively, and then
+added, "and all who joined in pushing her to it. I know _I_ wouldn't
+join. I think folks have enough of their own to answer for, without
+bringing judgments down on their heads for things like that. It won't
+get me to heaven to help in interfering between Mariquita and her way of
+getting there."
+
+All the while she spoke, Sarella seemed to be admiring, with her head
+turned on one side, the prettiness of her left wrist on which was a gold
+bangle, with a crystal heart dangling from it. Don Joaquin had given her
+the bangle, and himself admired the heart chiefly because it was crystal
+and not of diamonds.
+
+"Isn't it pretty?" she said, looking suddenly up and catching his eye
+watching her.
+
+"I thought you hadn't cared much for it," he answered, greatly pleased.
+He had always known _she_ would have preferred a smaller heart if
+crusted with diamonds.
+
+Gore longed to laugh. She astonished and puzzled him. Her cleverness was
+a revelation to him, and her good-nature, her subtlety, and her
+earnestness--for he knew she had been in earnest in what she said about
+not daring to interfere with other people's ways of getting to heaven.
+
+"That old man who instructs her," he thought, "must have taught her a
+lot."
+
+Of course, on his own account, he was no more afraid of Don Joaquin than
+she was. But he had been terribly afraid of the hard old man on
+Mariquita's, and he was deeply grateful to Sarella.
+
+"Sir," he said, "what she has said to you I do feel myself. I am a
+Catholic--and the dearest of my sisters is a nun. I should have hated
+and despised any man who had tried to spoil her life by snatching it to
+himself against her will. He would have to be a wicked fellow, and
+brutal, and impious. God's curse would lie on him. So it would on me if
+I did that hideous thing, though God knows to-day has brought me the
+great disappointment of my life. Life can never be for me what I have
+been hoping it might be. Never."
+
+Sarella, listening, and knowing that the two men were looking at each
+other, smiled at her bangle, and softly shook the dangling heart to make
+the crystal give as diamond-like a glitter as possible. Gore's life, she
+thought, would come all right. She had done her best valorously for
+Mariquita; women, in her theory, behooved to do their best for each
+other against masculine tyrrany ("bossishness," she called it), but all
+the time she was half-savage, herself, with the girl for not being
+willing to be happy in so obviously comfortable a way as offered. It
+seemed to her "wasteful" that so pretty a girl should go and be a nun;
+if she had been "homely" like Sister Aquinas it would have been
+different. But Sarella had learned from Sister Aquinas that these
+matters were above her, and was quite content to accept them without
+understanding them.
+
+"Ever since I came here," Gore was saying, "I have lived in a dream of
+what life would be--if I could join hers with mine. It was only a dream,
+and I had to awake."
+
+Don Joaquin did not understand his mind, but he was able now to see that
+the young man suffered, and had received a blow that, somehow, _would_
+change his life, and turn its course aside.
+
+"Anything," Gore said, in a very low, almost thankful tone, "is better
+than it would have been if I had changed my dream for a nightmare; it
+would have been that, if I had to think of myself as trying to pull her
+down, from her level to mine, of her as having been brought down. I
+meant to do her all possible good, all my life long. How can I wish to
+have done her the greatest harm? As it would have been if, out of fear
+or over-persuasion, she had been brought to call herself my wife who
+could be no man's wife."
+
+("_How_ he loves her!" thought Sarella.)
+
+("I doubt it has wrecked him a bit," thought Don Joaquin.)
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+
+Mariquita awoke early to see Sarella entering her room, and it surprised
+her, for her cousin was not fond of leaving her bed betimes.
+
+"Oh, I'm going back to bed again," Sarella explained. "We were up to all
+hours. Of course, your father made a rumpus."
+
+Mariquita heard this with less surprise than concern. It really grieved
+her to displease him.
+
+"He has very queer old-fashioned notions," Sarella remarked, settling
+herself comfortably on Mariquita's bed, "and thinks it's his business to
+arrange all your affairs for you. Besides, you know by this time that
+any plan he has been hatching he expects to hatch out, and not to help
+him seems to him most undutiful and shocking."
+
+"But I _can't_ help him in this plan of his," Mariquita pleaded
+unhappily.
+
+"I suppose not. Well, he flared out, and I was glad you were in bed.
+Gore behaved very well. It's a thousand pities you can't like him."
+
+"But I do like him. I like him better than any man I ever knew."
+
+"Oh, yes! Better than the cowboys or the old chaplain at Loretto.
+_That's_ no good."
+
+All this Sarella intended as medicinal; Mariquita, she thought, ought to
+have _some_ of the chill of the late storm. She was not entitled to
+immediate and complete relief from suspense. But Sarella was beginning
+to feel a little chill about the legs herself, and did not care to risk
+a cold, so she abbreviated her disciplinary remarks a little.
+
+"I'm a good stepmother," she remarked complacently, "not at all like one
+in a novel. I took your part."
+
+"Did you!" Mariquita cried gratefully; "it was very, very kind of you."
+
+"I don't approve of men having things all their own way--whether fathers
+or husbands. He has been knocked under to too much. Yes, I took your
+part, and made him understand that if he kept the row up he'd have
+three of us against him."
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+"All sorts of things. Never mind. Perhaps Mr. Gore will tell you--only
+he won't. He said a lot of things too. We made your father think he
+would be wicked if he went on bullying you."
+
+Of course, Mariquita did not understand how this had been effected.
+
+"He would not do anything wicked," she said; "he is a very good man."
+
+"He'd be a very good mule," Sarella observed coolly, considerably
+scandalizing Mariquita.
+
+"You'd have found him a pretty unpleasant one, if Gore and I had left
+you to manage him yourself." Sarella added, entirely unmoved by her
+cousin's shocked look. "We managed him. He won't beat you now. But you'd
+better keep out of his way as much as you can for a bit. If I were you,
+I'd have a bad headache and stop in bed."
+
+"But I haven't a headache. I never do have headaches."
+
+Sarella made a queer face, and sighed, then laughed.
+
+"Anyway, you're not to be made to marry Mr. Gore," she said.
+
+Mariquita looked enormously relieved, and began to express her grateful
+sense of Sarella's good offices.
+
+"For that matter," Sarella cut in, "neither will Mr. Gore be made to
+marry _you_--so if you change your mind it will be no good. He thinks it
+would be wicked to marry you."
+
+Mariquita perfectly understood that Sarella was trying to make her
+sorry, and only gave a cheerful little laugh.
+
+"Then," she said, "I shall certainly not ask him. It would be quite
+useless to ask him to do anything wicked."
+
+"The fact is," Sarella told her, "that you and he ought to be put in a
+glass case--two glass cases, you'd both of you be quite shocked at the
+idea of being in _one_--and labelled. It's a good thing you're unique.
+If other lovers were like you two, there'd be no marriages."
+
+She got up, and prepared to return to her own room.
+
+"Hulloa!" she said, "there's the auto. Your father's going off
+somewhere, and you can get up. Probably he is taking Gore away."
+
+"Is Mr. Gore going away?"
+
+"He'll have to. There's no one here for him to marry except Ginger; but
+no doubt you want him to become a monk."
+
+"A monk! He hasn't the least idea of such a thing."
+
+"Oh, dear!" sighed Sarella, instantly changing the sigh into a laugh.
+"How funny you people are who never condescend to see a joke."
+
+"I didn't know," Mariquita confessed meekly, "that you had made one."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+
+Don Joaquin was not yet recovered from his annoyance. As Sarella had
+perceived, he could not easily condone the defective conduct of those
+who, owing him obedience, refused to carry out a plan that he had long
+been meditating. But he had been frightened by the picture she had
+suggested of Divine judgment, and wondered if the hitches that had
+occurred in the issue of the dispensation for his marriage had been a
+hint of them--a threatening of what would happen if he opposed the
+Heavenly Will concerning his daughter's vocation. It was chiefly because
+the plan of her marriage had been deliberately adopted by himself, that
+he was reluctant to abandon it. Her own plan of becoming a nun would, he
+gradually came to see, suit him quite as well. And presently he became
+aware that, financially, it would suit him even better. If she "entered
+Religion," he would have to give her a dowry; but not, he imagined, a
+large one, five thousand dollars or so, he guessed. Whereas, if she
+married Gore, he would be expected to give her much more. Besides, her
+marriage would very likely involve subsequent gifts and expenditure. It
+would all come out of what he wished to save for the beloved son of whom
+he was always thinking. As a nun, too, Mariquita would be largely
+engaged in praying for the soul of her mother, and for his own soul and
+Sarella's and her brother's.
+
+By the time he and Mariquita met he had grasped all these advantages,
+and, though aloof and disapproving in his manner, he did not attack her.
+
+As it pleased him to admire in Sarella a delightful shrewdness in
+affairs, he gave her credit for favoring Mariquita's plan because it
+would leave more money for her own children. In this he paid her an
+undeserved compliment, for Sarella did not know in the least that
+Mariquita would receive less of her father's money if she became a nun
+than if she married Mr. Gore. She had not thought of it, being much of
+opinion that Gore would ask for nothing in the way of dowry and that Don
+Joaquin would give nothing without much asking.
+
+Don Joaquin was considerably taken aback to learn that Mariquita had
+formed no definite plans yet as to her "entering Religion." He had
+promptly decided that, of course, she would go back to Loretto as a nun,
+and he was proportionally surprised to find that she had no such idea.
+This surprise he expressed, almost in dudgeon, to Sarella. He appeared
+to consider himself quite ill-used by such vagueness; if young women
+wanted to be nuns it behooved them to know exactly where they meant to
+go, and what religious work they felt called to undertake.
+
+"If I were you," Sarella told him, after some hasty consideration, "I
+would let her go to Loretto--on a visit. You will find she makes up her
+mind quicker there--with nothing to distract her. Sister Aquinas talks
+of Retreats--Mariquita could make one."
+
+"Who's to do the work here while she's away?" grumbled Don Joaquin.
+
+"It will have to be done when she's gone for good. We may just as well
+think it out."
+
+Sarella was quite resolved that she would never be the slave Mariquita
+had been, and did not mind having the struggle, if there was to be one,
+now.
+
+"Whether Mariquita married or became a nun," she went on, "she would be
+gone from here. Her place would have to be supplied--more than supplied,
+for a young wife like me could not do nearly so much work. I should have
+things to do an unmarried girl has not, and be unfit for much work. I am
+sure you understand that. Sister Aquinas knows two sisters, very
+respectable and trustworthy, steady, and not too young. I meant to speak
+to you about them. They would suit us as well. They will not separate,
+and for that matter, we can't do with less than two."
+
+Sarella's great object was to open the matter; she intended to succeed
+but did not count on instant success, or success without a struggle. Don
+Joaquin had to be familiarized with a scheme some time before he would
+adopt it. He rebelled at first and for that rebellion she punished him.
+
+"Mariquita's position was wrong," she told him boldly. "It tended to
+make her unlike other girls and give her unusual ideas. She was tied by
+the leg here, by too much work, and her only rest or recreation was
+solitary thinking. If she had been taken about and met her equals she
+would have been like other girls, I expect. She was a slave and sought
+her freedom in the skies."
+
+Don Joaquin enjoyed this philippic very little; perhaps he only partly
+understood it, but he did understand that Sarella thought Mariquita had
+been put upon and did not intend being put upon herself. He would have
+been much less influenced if he had thought of Sarella as specially
+devoted to his daughter or blindly fond of her, but he had always
+believed that there was but a cool sympathy between the two girls, and
+that Sarella would have found fault with Mariquita quite willingly if
+there had been fault to find.
+
+"You have taken up the cudgels," he said sourly, "very strongly for
+Mariquita of late."
+
+"As time goes on I naturally feel able to speak more plainly than I
+could when I first came here. I was only your guest. It is different 'of
+late.' And I am 'taking up the cudgels' for myself more than for
+Mariquita."
+
+"Oh, I quite see that," he retorted with a savage grin.
+
+Sarella determined to hit back, and she was by no means restrained by
+scruples as to "hitting below the belt."
+
+"Fortunately for her," she said, "Mariquita has splendid health, and
+work did not kill her. She has the strength of a horse. Her mother did
+not leave it to her. I have always heard in the family that Aunt
+Margaret was delicate, physically unfit for hard work. Men do not notice
+those things. She died too young, and might have lived much longer if
+she had not overtaxed her strength. She ought to have been prevented
+from doing so much work. You were not too poor to have allowed her
+plenty of help--and you are much better off now."
+
+Don Joaquin almost jumped with horror; he had really adored his wife,
+and now he was being flatly and relentlessly accused of having perhaps
+shortened her life by lack of consideration for her. And was it true? He
+could not help remembering much to support the accusation. She had been
+a woman of feeble health and feeble temper; her singular beauty of
+feature and coloring had been in every eye but Joaquin's own, marred by
+an expression of discontent and complaining, though she had been too
+much in awe of her masterful husband to set out her grievances to him;
+he guessed now that she must have written grumbling letters to her
+relations far away in the East. The man was no monster of cruelty; he
+was merely stingy and money-loving, hard-natured, and without
+imagination. Possessed of iron health himself, he had never conceived
+that the sort of work his Indian mother had submissively performed could
+be beyond the strength of his wife. It was true that he was much richer
+now than he had been when he married, and Sarella had herself
+accustomed him to the idea of greater expenditure, however dexterously
+he might have done his best to neutralize those spendings. He was more
+obstinately set upon marrying her than ever, because he had for a long
+time now decided upon the marriage; he was nervously afraid of her
+drawing back if he didn't yield to her wishes, the utterance of which he
+took to be a sort of ultimatum.
+
+"Are these two women Catholics?" he demanded, feeling sure that Sister
+Aquinas would only recommend such; "I will not have Protestant servants
+in the house."
+
+"They are excellent Catholics," Sarella assured him, "educated in the
+convent."
+
+"Then I will consider the plan. You can ask Sister Aquinas about the
+conditions--wages, and so forth."
+
+"What a pity," thought Sarella, when the interview had ended, "that
+Mariquita never knew how to manage him."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+
+There was no pomp of leave-taking about Mariquita's departure for
+Loretto. She was only going on a visit, and would return.
+
+"Whatever you decide upon," Sarella insisted, "you must come back for
+your father's wedding."
+
+Mariquita promised, and went away, her father driving her all the way to
+Loretto in the auto. Her departure did not move him much, though he
+would have been better pleased, after all, if she were going away to a
+husband's house. Sarella, watching them disappear in the distance, felt
+it more than the stoical old half-breed.
+
+"I shall miss her," she said to herself; "I like her better than I
+thought I should. She's as straight as an arrow, and as true as gold. I
+suppose this watch _is_ gold; he'd never dare to give me _rolled_
+gold.... Only nine o'clock. It will be a long day, and I shall miss her
+all the time. Quiet as she is, it will make a lot of difference. No one
+has such a nice way of laughing, when she does laugh. I wonder if she
+guesses how little her father cares? _He_ won't miss her much. Some men
+care never a pin for a woman unless they want to marry her. _He_ has no
+use for the others. I expect it makes them good husbands, though. Poor
+Mariquita! I think I should have hated him if I had been her. It never
+occurred to her; at first I thought she must be an A-Number-One
+hypocrite, she seemed to think him so exactly all that he ought to be to
+her. Then I thought she must be stupid--I soon saw she was as sincere as
+a baby. But she's not stupid either. She's just Mariquita; she really
+does see only the things she ought to see, and it's queer. I never saw
+anyone else that way. I thought at first she _must_ be jealous of me,
+the old man put her so completely on one side, and made such a lot of
+me. Any other girl would have been. I soon saw she wasn't; it never
+entered her head that he might leave me money that ought to be hers--it
+would have entered mine, I know. But 'she never thought of that,' as she
+used to say about everything." Oddly enough, it was at this particular
+recollection that a certain dewy brightness (that became them well)
+glistened in Sarella's pretty eyes.
+
+"Well," she thought, "I'm glad I can call to mind that I did the best I
+could for her. It made me feel just sick to think of the old man
+brow-beating and bullying her. I saw a big hulking fellow beat his
+little girl once, and I felt just the same, only I could _do_ nothing
+then but scream. I was a child myself, and I did scream, and I bit him.
+I'm glad I did bite him, though I was spanked for it. I suppose I'll
+have to confess biting him, though I don't call it a sin. What on earth
+can Mariquita confess? At first her goodness put my back up. But I wish
+she was back. It never occurs to her that she's good. I soon found that
+out. And she thinks everyone else as good as gold. She thinks all these
+cowboys good, and she does almost make them want to be. It was funny
+that she didn't dislike me. (_I_ should have if I'd been in her place.)
+When she kissed me good-bye and said 'Sarella, we'll never forget each
+other,' it meant more than pounds of candy-talk from another girl.
+Forget her! Not I. Will Gore? He will never think any other girl her
+equal. Mrs. Gore may make up her mind to that. Perhaps he'll marry
+someone not half so good as himself and rather like it. Pfush! It feels
+lonesome now. I often used to get into my own room to get out of
+Mariquita's way, and stretch the legs of my mind over a novel. I wish
+she was here now...."
+
+And Sarella did not speedily give over missing Mariquita. She was a girl
+who on principle preferred men's society to that of other women, but in
+practice had considerable need of female companionship. She liked to
+make men admire her, but she did not much care to be admired by the
+cowboys, and took it for granted that they already admired her as much
+as befitted their inferior position. She had always been too shrewd to
+try and make other women admire her, but she liked talking to them about
+clothes, which no man understands; and, though Mariquita had been
+careless about her own sumptuous affairs, she had been a wonderfully
+appreciative (or long-suffering) listener when Sarella talked about
+hers.
+
+"And after all," Sarella confessed, "she had taste. My style would not
+have suited her. That plain style of her own was best for her."
+
+When Don Joaquin returned from Denver he seemed unlike himself, almost
+subdued. He had been much impressed by the great convent and its large
+community; the nuns had made much of him, and of Mariquita. They spoke
+in a way that at last put it into his head that he had under-valued her;
+there is nothing for awaking our appreciation of our own near relations
+like the sudden perception that other people think greatly of them.
+Gore's respect and admiration for his daughter had not done much, for he
+had only looked upon it as the blind predilection of a young man in love
+with a beautiful girl. Several of the nuns, including their Reverend
+Mother, had spoken to him apart, in Mariquita's absence, not
+immediately on his and her arrival, but on the evening of the following
+day; on the morrow he was to depart on his return to the range, and in
+these conversations the Sisters let him plainly see that they regarded
+the girl as peculiarly graced by God, and of rarely high and noble
+character.
+
+He asked the Superior if she thought Mariquita would wish to stay with
+them and become one of themselves.
+
+"No," was the answer. "She is a born Contemplative. Every nun must be a
+contemplative in some degree, but I use the word in its common sense. I
+mean that I believe she will find herself called to an Order of pure
+Contemplatives. She will make a Retreat here, and very likely will be
+shown during it what is God's will for her."
+
+It surprised the kind and warm-hearted Religious that he did not inquire
+whether that life were not very hard. But she took charitable refuge in
+the supposition that he knew so little about one Order or another as to
+be free from the dread that his child might have a life of great
+austerity before her.
+
+"You may be sure," she said, in case later on any such affectionate
+misgiving should trouble him, "that she will be happy. Unseen by you or
+us she will do great things for God and His children. You shall share in
+it by giving her to Him when He calls. She is your only child ("As yet,"
+thought Don Joaquin, even now more concerned for her brother, than for
+her) and God will reward your generosity. He never lets Himself be
+outstripped in that. For the gift of Abraham's son He blest his whole
+race."
+
+Don Joaquin knew very little about Abraham, but he understood that all
+the Jews since his time had been notably successful in finance.
+
+It did not cause him any particular emotion to leave his daughter. She
+was being left where she liked to be, and would doubtless be at home
+among these holy women who seemed to think so much of her, and to be so
+fond of her. He had forgiven her for wishing to be a nun and thought
+highly of himself for having given his permission.
+
+The nuns thought he concealed his feelings to spare Mariquita's, and
+praised God for the unselfishness of parents.
+
+Mariquita had never expected tenderness from him, but she thought him a
+good man and a good father, and was very grateful for his concession in
+abandoning his insistence on her marriage, and sanctioning her choice of
+her own way of life. And he did embrace her on parting, and bade God
+bless her, reminding her that it would be her duty to pray much for
+himself and Sarella. At the range he found a letter, which had arrived
+late on the day on which he had left home with her, and this letter he
+took as a proof that she had prayed to some purpose. The dispensation
+was granted and he could now fix his marriage for any date he chose.
+
+"Did she send me her love?" Sarella asked, jealous of being at all
+forgotten.
+
+"Yes, twice; and when I kissed her she said, 'Kiss Sarella for me.' Also
+she sent you a letter."
+
+Sarella received very few letters and liked getting them. She was rather
+curious to see what sort of letter Mariquita would write, and made up
+her mind it would be "nunnish and poky."
+
+Whether "nunnish" or no, it was not "poky," but pleasant, very cheerful
+and bright, and very affectionate. It contained little jokish allusions
+to home matters, and former confidential talks, and one passage (much
+valued by Sarella) concerning a gown, retracting a former opinion and
+substituting another backed by most valid reasons. "If those speckled
+hens go on eating each other's feathers," said the letter, "you'll have
+to kill them and eat them. Once they start they never give it up, and it
+puts the idea in the others' heads. Feathers don't suit everybody, but
+fowls look wicked without them. I hope poor old Jack doesn't miss me;
+give him and Ginger my love, and ask him to forgive me for not marrying
+Mr. Gore--he gave me a terrible lecture about it, and Ginger said, 'Quit
+it, Dad! I _knew_ she wouldn't. I know sweethearts when I see
+them--though I never did see one--not of my own.' I expect Larry Burke
+will show her one soon, don't you, Sarella? It will do very well; Larry
+will have the looks and Ginger will have the sense, and teach him all
+he needs. He has such a good heart he can get on without _too_ much
+sense...."
+
+Sarella liked her letter, and decided that Mariquita was not lost,
+though removed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+
+"I suppose," Don Joaquin remarked in a disengaged manner, "that, after
+all your preparations, we can fix the day for our wedding any time now."
+
+Sarella was not in the least taken in by his elaborate air of having
+been able, for _his_ part, to have fixed a day long ago.
+
+It was, however, part of her system to fall in with people's whimsies
+when nothing was to be gained by opposing or exposing them.
+
+"Oh, yes," she agreed, most amiably. "It will take three Sundays to
+publish the banns--any day after that. Meanwhile I should be received.
+Sister Aquinas says I am ready. As soon as we have settled the exact
+time, we must let Mariquita know, and you can, when the time comes, go
+over and fetch her home."
+
+Don Joaquin consented, and Sarella thought she would go and deliver
+Mariquita's message to Jack and his daughter. She found them together
+and began by saying, smilingly:
+
+"I expect you have known for a long while that there was a marriage in
+the air?"
+
+Old Jack had not learned to like her, and Ginger still disliked her
+smile.
+
+"I don't believe," she said perversely, for, of course, both she and her
+father understood perfectly, "that Miss Mariquita is going to be
+married. She's not that way."
+
+This was a discouraging opening, for it seemed to cast a sort of slur on
+young women who _were_ likely to be married.
+
+"Mr. Gore's never asked again!" cried Jack.
+
+"Dad, don't you be silly," Ginger suggested; "everyone knows Miss
+Mariquita wants to be a nun."
+
+"Yes," said Sarella with impregnable amiability, "but we can't all be
+nuns. Miss Mariquita doesn't seem to think _you_ likely to be one. She
+sent me back by her father such a nice letter. She sends Jack and you
+her love, and, though she doesn't send Larry Burke her love, thinking of
+you evidently makes her think of him."
+
+Ginger visibly relaxed, and her father stared appallingly with his one
+eye.
+
+"Good Lord!" quoth he in more sincere than flattering astonishment.
+
+"Well, he is good," Ginger observed cooly, "and there's worse folk than
+Larry Burke, or me either."
+
+"Miss Mariquita thinks it would be such a good thing for him," Sarella
+reported. "So must any one."
+
+Ginger felt that this, after her unpleasantness to the young lady who
+brought the message, was handsome.
+
+"He might do better," she declared, "and he might do worse."
+
+"Has he _said_ anything?" her father inquired with undisguised
+incredulity.
+
+"What he's said is nothing," Ginger calmly replied. "It's what I think
+as matters. He's no Cressote, but he's got a bit--or ought, if he hasn't
+spent it. I'd keep his money together for him, and he'd soon find it a
+saving. And I could do with him--for if his head's soft so's his heart.
+I think, Dad," she concluded, willing "to take it out" of her father
+for his unflattering incredulity, "you may as well, when Miss Sarella's
+gone, tell him to step round. I'll soon fix it."
+
+"I couldn't do that," Jack expostulated.
+
+"Why not?" Ginger demanded with fell determination.
+
+"I really don't see why you shouldn't," Sarella protested, much amused
+though not betraying it. "It's all for his good," she added seriously.
+
+Jack was shaken, but not yet disposed to obedience.
+
+"Larry," Sarella urged, "won't be so much surprised as you think. Miss
+Mariquita, you see, wants him and Ginger to make a match of it--"
+
+"But does _he_?" Jack pleaded, moved by Mariquita's opinion, but not so
+sure it would reduce Larry to subjection.
+
+"Tut!" said Ginger impatiently. "What's _he_ to do with it? If he don't
+know what's best for him, I do. So does Miss Sarella. So does Miss
+Mariquita."
+
+"And," Sarella added, "you may be sure Miss Mariquita would never have
+said a word about it if she hadn't felt pretty sure it was to come off.
+She's never been one to be planning marriages. Why, Larry must have made
+it as plain as a pikestaff that he was ready, or she would never have
+guessed it."
+
+The weight of this argument left Jack defenseless.
+
+"Hadn't you better wait, Ginger," he attempted to argue with shallow
+subtlety; "he's like enough to step round after supper. Then I'd clear,
+and you could say when you liked."
+
+"No," Ginger decided, "I'm tired of him stepping round after supper,
+just to chatter. He'd be prepared if you told him I'd said he was to
+come. He'd know something was wanted. In fact, you'd better tell him."
+
+"Tell him? Me? Tell him what?"
+
+"Just that I'd made up my mind to say 'yes' if he'd a question to ask
+me."
+
+"Why," cried Jack, aghast, "he'd get on his horse and scoot."
+
+"Not far," Ginger opined, entirely unmoved. "He'd ride back. He's not
+pluck enough to be such a coward as to scoot for good. Just you try."
+
+The two women drove the battered old fellow off, Ginger laughed and
+said:
+
+"Aren't men helpless?"
+
+Sarella was full of admiration of her prowess.
+
+"Well, _you're_ not," she said.
+
+"Not me. But, Dad won't find Larry as much surprised as he thinks. It's
+been in the silly chap's head (or where folks keep their ideas that have
+no head) this three weeks. _I_ saw, though he never said a lot--"
+
+Overpowered by curiosity, Sarella asked boldly what he did say.
+
+"Oh, just rubbish," Ginger answered laughing; "you're as clean as a
+tablet of scented soap, anyway," says he, first. Then he said, "Ginger,
+I've known pretty girls with hair not near so nice as yours--not a
+quarter so much of it." Another time he asked if I kept a tooth-brush.
+"I thought so," says he, quite loving; "your teeth's as white as nuts
+with the brown skin off, and as regular as a row of tombstones in an
+undertaker's window. I never _did_ mind freckles as true as I stand
+here ..." and stuff like that. But the strongest ever he said was,
+"Pastry! What's pastry when a woman don't know how to make it. I'd as
+soon eat second-hand toast. Yours, Ginger, is like what the angels make,
+_I_ should say, at Thanksgiving for the little angels.'"
+
+"Did he, really!" said Sarella, feeling quite sure that Larry would not
+"scoot."
+
+"I told him," Ginger explained calmly, that if he didn't quit such
+senseless talk _he'd_ never get any more of my pastry. He looked so down
+that I gave him a slice of pumpkin pie when he was leaving. "The
+pastry," says I, "will mind you of me, and the pumpkin of yourself." But
+he got his own back, for he just grinned and said, "Yes, I'll think o'
+them together, Ginger, for the pie and the pumpkin belongs together,
+don't they?"
+
+Sarella laughed and expressed her belief that after all Jack's embassy
+was rather superfluous.
+
+"Maybe so. But I knew he'd hate it, and he deserved it for seeming so
+unbelieving. If my mother had been _lovely_ I'd have been born plain;
+it's not _him_ as should think me too ugly for any young fellow to
+fancy. I daresay I shouldn't have decided to take Larry if Miss
+Mariquita hadn't sent that message. I was afraid she'd think me a fool.
+Here's Larry coming round the corner, looking as if he'd been stealing
+his mother's sugar."
+
+"He's only thinking of your pastry," said Sarella. "I'll slip off. May I
+be told when it's all settled?"
+
+"Yes, certainly, Miss Sarella, and I'm sure I wish all that's best to
+the Boss and yourself. It's not everyone could manage him, but _you_
+will. Poor Miss Mariquita never could. She was too good."
+
+With these mixed compliments Sarella had to content herself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+
+When she answered Mariquita's letter she was to report not only the
+judicial end of the plumiverous and specked hens, but the betrothal of
+Larry Burke and Ginger. "Nothing," she wrote, "but his dread of your
+displeasure could have overcome his dread of what the other cowboys
+would say on hearing of his proposing. After all, he has more sense than
+some sharp fellows who follow at last the advice they know is worth
+least...."
+
+In her next letter Sarella said:
+
+"I am to be made a Catholic on Monday next; so when you're saying your
+prayers (and that's all day) you can be thinking of me. Perhaps I gave
+in to it first to satisfy your father; but even then I thought 'if it
+makes me a bit more like Mariquita he'll get a better bargain in me.' I
+shan't ever be at all like you, but I shall be of the same Religion as
+you, and I know by this time that it will do me good. It's all a bit
+too big for me to understand, but I like what I do understand, and
+Sister Aquinas says I shall grow into it. Clothes, she says, fit better
+when they're worn a bit, and sit easier. She says, 'It has changed you,
+my dear child, already; you are gentler, and kinder.' She said another
+thing, 'Your husband has been a Catholic all his life, but you will
+gradually make him a better one. He is a very sensible man, and he can't
+see you learning to be a Catholic and not want to learn what it really
+means himself. He is too honest.' She likes your father a lot, and never
+bothers him. 'I know,' she said, 'you will not bother him either. Some
+earnest Catholics do bother their men-folks terribly about religious
+things--and for all the good they seem to do, might be only half as
+earnest and have a better effect.' I make my First Communion the day
+after I'm received. And, Mariquita, my dear, we are to be married that
+day week. Your father will fetch you home, and mind, _mind_, you come. I
+should never forgive you if you didn't. Shall I have Ginger for a
+bridesmaid? I know some brides do choose ugly ones to make themselves
+look better. The cowboys (this is a dead secret told me by Ginger) have
+subscribed to give us a wedding-present. I hope it won't be one of those
+clocks like black-marble monuments with a round gilt eye in it. I expect
+the cowboys laugh at both these marriages. But they rather like them.
+They make a lark, and they never do dislike anything they can laugh at.
+They certainly all look twice as amiably at me when we meet about the
+place since they _knew_ I was going to be married. And Ginger finds them
+so friendly and pleasant I expect she thinks she might, if she had
+liked, have married the lot. But that's different. I daresay you notice
+that I write more cheerfully, now it is settled. Yes, I do. I like him a
+great deal more than at first. It began when he gave in about what you
+wanted. I really believe I shall make him happy--and I fancy I think of
+that more--I mean less of his making me happy. And, Mariquita, it _is_
+good of me to have wanted you to be let alone to be a nun if you thought
+it right, because, oh dear, how I should like you to be living near or
+at the next range! Before I got to know you, it was just the opposite. I
+hoped you'd get a husband of your own and _quit_; I did. I thought you'd
+hate your father marrying again, and (if you stayed on here) would be
+looking disapproval all day long, and perhaps I thought you would not be
+best pleased at not getting all his money when he died. (I think when
+people go to Confession they ought to confess things like that. Do
+they?) Oh, Mariquita, you will be missed. But I'd rather miss you, and
+know you were being what you felt yourself called away to, than think I
+had helped to have you interfered with...."
+
+Mariquita, reading Sarella's letter, felt something new in her life,
+something strangely moving, that filled her eyes and heart with
+something also new--happy tears. The free gift of tenderness came newly
+to her; and, it may be, she had least of all looked for it from Sarella.
+
+"'Do people,' she quoted to herself from Sarella _herself_, 'confess
+these things?' I will, anyway."
+
+It hurt her to think that she who so loved justice and charity, must
+have been both uncharitable and unjust.
+
+But can we agree? Had not Sarella's unforeseen tenderness been her own
+gift to her? Had Sarella brought tenderness with her from the East?
+
+At the stranger's first coming Mariquita had not judged but _felt_ her,
+and her feeling (of which she herself knew very little) had been
+instinctively correct while it lasted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+
+Of course Mariquita kept her promise of being present at her father's
+marriage. It had never occurred to her that she could be absent; it was
+a duty of respect that she owed to him, and a duty of fellow-womanhood
+that she owed to Sarella.
+
+It amused her a little to hear that a certain Mrs. Kane was to be
+present, in a sort of maternal quality, and that Mr. Kane was to give
+the bride away as a sort of official father. Mr. Kane might have seen
+Sarella a dozen times--in the parlor of the convent, which she was much
+given to frequent. Mrs. Kane had, so far as Mariquita was aware, never
+seen her at all--except at Mass.
+
+They were Kentuckians who had moved west some twelve years earlier than
+Sarella herself, and, though they had not made a fortune, were
+sufficiently well off to be rather leading members of the congregation.
+Mrs. Kane's most outstanding characteristic was a genius for organizing
+bazaars, on a scale of ever-increasing importance; the first had been
+for the purchase of a harmonium, the last had been to raise funds for a
+new wing to the Convent; all her friends had prophesied failure for the
+first; no one had dared predict anything but dazzling success for the
+last. Mr. Kane was not less remarkable for his phenomenal success in the
+matter of whist-drives--and raffles. He would raffle the nose off your
+face if you would let him, and hand over an astonishing sum to the
+church when he had done it, with the most exquisite satisfaction that
+the proceeding was not strictly legal.
+
+Both the Kanes were extremely amusing, and no one could decide which was
+the more good-natured of the two. Of week-day afternoons Mrs. Kane was
+quite sumptuously attired, Mr. Kane liked to be rather shabby even on
+Sundays at Mass, which caused him to be generally reported somewhat more
+affluent than he really was. He had always been supposed to be "about
+fifty," whereas Mrs. Kane had, ever since her arrival, spoken of herself
+as "on the sensible side of thirty."
+
+At Sarella's wedding Mrs. Kane's magnificence deeply impressed the
+cowboys; and Mr. Kane's elaborate paternity towards the bride, whom he
+only knew by her dress, would have deceived if it had been possible the
+very elect; they were not precisely that and it did not deceive, though
+it hugely delighted them.
+
+"I swear he's _crying_!" whispered Pete Rugger to Larry Burke. "He cried
+just like that in the play when Mrs. Hooger ran away with her own
+husband that represented the hero."
+
+"Well," said Larry, "a man can't help his feelings."
+
+He was secretly wondering if Mr. Kane would give away Ginger--he would
+do it so much better than Jack.
+
+Mrs. Kane affected no tears. She had the air of serenely parting with a
+daughter, for her own good, to an excellent, wealthy husband whom she
+had found for her, and of being ready to do as much for the rest of her
+many daughters--Mr. and Mrs. Kane were childless.
+
+Perhaps this attitude on her part suited better with her resplendent
+costume than it would have suited her husband's black attire--which he
+kept for funerals.
+
+Little was lost on the cowboys, and they did not fail to note that the
+gray which of recent years had been invading the "Boss's" hair had
+disappeared.
+
+"In the distance he don't look a lot older than Gore," Pete Rugger
+declared to his neighbor.
+
+Gore supported Don Joaquin as "best" or groomsman.
+
+It was significant that on Mariquita's appearance no spoken comment was
+made by any of the cowboys, though to each of them she was the most
+absorbing figure. Her father had fetched her from Loretto three days
+before the wedding, and at the Convent had been introduced to a
+learned-looking but agreeable ecclesiastic who was a rector of a college
+for lay youths.
+
+Don Joaquin, much interested, had plied the reverend pundit with
+inquiries concerning this seat of learning, not forgetting particular
+inquisition as to the terms.
+
+On their conclusion he took notes in writing of all the replies and
+declared that it sounded exactly what he would choose for his own son.
+
+"I would like," he said, with a simplicity that rather touched the
+rector, "that my lad should grow up with more education than I ever
+had."
+
+"Your son," surmised the rector, "would be younger than his sister?"
+
+"He would," Don Joaquin admitted, without condescending upon
+particulars.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+
+When Gore next saw Mariquita in public she herself was dressed as a
+bride. It was a little more than a year later. After her return to
+Loretto she remained there about three weeks, at the end of which she
+went home to the range for a week. Her parents (as Don Joaquin insisted
+on describing himself and Sarella) had returned from their wedding trip,
+and she could see that the marriage was a success. The two new servants
+were installed, and Ginger was now Mrs. Lawrence Burke and absent on
+_her_ wedding journey.
+
+Mariquita's father made more of her than of old, and inwardly resolved
+to make up to "her brother" for any shortcomings there might have been
+in her case.
+
+Sarella was unfeignedly glad to have her at home, and looked forward
+sadly to her final departure. Of one thing she was resolved--that
+Mariquita should be taken all the way to her "Carmel" in California by
+both "her parents." And, of course, she got her own way.
+
+The extreme beauty of the Convent and its surroundings, the glory of the
+climate, the brilliance of its light, the splendor of the blue and gold
+of sky and hills, half blinded Sarella to the rigor of the life
+Mariquita was entering--till the moment of actual farewell came. Then
+her tears fell, far more plentifully than Mr. Kane's at her own wedding.
+
+Still she admitted that the nuns were as cheerful as the sky, and
+wondered if she had ever heard more happy laughter than theirs as they
+sat on the floor, with Mariquita in their midst, behind the grille in
+the "speak-room." As a postulant Mariquita did not wear the habit, but
+only a sort of cloak over her own dress; her glorious hair was not yet
+cut off.
+
+Don Joaquin did not see the nuns, as did Sarella, with the curtains of
+the grille drawn back. It seemed to him that the big spikes of the
+grille were turned the wrong way, for he could not imagine anyone
+desiring to get forcibly _in_. He watched everything, fully content to
+take all for granted as the regulation and proper thing, without
+particularly understanding any of it. It gave him considerable
+satisfaction to hear that Saint Theresa was a Spaniard, and he thought
+it sensible of Mariquita to join a Spanish order. He had no misgivings
+as to her finding the life hard--he did not know in the least what the
+life was, and made no inquisition; he had a general idea that women did
+not feel fastings and so forth. He would have felt it very much himself
+if he had had to rise with the dawn and go fasting till midday, instead
+of beginning the day with a huge meal of meat.
+
+The old life at the range, as it had been when Sarella first came, was
+never resumed. She was determined that its complete isolation should be
+changed, and she changed it with wonderful rapidity and success. The
+friendly and kind-hearted Kanes helped her a great deal. They had
+insisted, at the wedding itself, that the bride and bridegroom should
+pay them a very early visit, after their return from their
+wedding-journey. It was paid immediately on their getting back from
+California, and it lasted several days. During those days their host and
+hostess took care that they should meet all the leading Catholics of the
+place, to whom Sarella made herself pleasant, administering to them (in
+her husband's disconcerted presence) pressing invitations to come out to
+the range: though they all had autos it was not to be expected that they
+would come so far for a cup of tea, and they came for a night, and often
+for two or three nights. Naturally the Kanes came first and they spoke
+almost with solemnity (as near solemnity as either could attain) of
+social duty. It was an obligation on all Catholics to hang together, and
+hanging together obviously implied frequent mutual hospitalities. Don
+Joaquin had found that the practice of his religion did imply
+obligations and duties never realized before, and he was a little
+confused as to their relative strictness. On the whole, he succumbed to
+what Sarella intended, with a compliance that might have surprised
+Mariquita had she been there to see. Some of the cowboys were of the
+opinion that the old man was breaking. He was only being (not
+immediately) broken in. A man of little over fifty, of iron
+constitution, does not "break," however old he may appear to
+five-and-twenty or thirty. The sign that appeared most ominous to these
+young men was that "the Boss" betrayed symptoms of less rigid
+stinginess; there was nothing really alarming about the symptoms. Such
+as they were they were due, not so much to any decay in the patient's
+constitution, as to a little awakening of conscience referable, such as
+it was, to the late-begun practices of confession. Old Jack was made
+foreman, at an increase of pay by no means dazzling, but quite
+satisfactory to himself, who had not expected any such promotion. Larry
+and Ginger settled, about two miles from the homestead, in a small house
+which they were permitted by Don Joaquin to build. Two of the cowboys
+found themselves wives whom they had first seen in church at Sarella's
+wedding; these young ladies, it appeared, had severally resolved that
+under no circumstances would they marry any but Catholics, and their
+lovers accepted the position, largely on the ground that a religion good
+enough for Miss Mariquita would be good enough for them.
+
+"Too good," grimly observed one of their comrades who was not then
+engaged to marry a Catholic.
+
+Don Joaquin allowed the two who were married to have a little place
+built for themselves on the range. And as the brides were each
+plentifully provided with sisters it seems likely that soon Don Joaquin
+will have quite a numerous tenantry. It also appears probable that a
+priest will presently be resident at the range, for one has already
+entered into correspondence with Don Joaquin on the subject. Having
+recently recovered from a "chest trouble," he has been advised that the
+air of the high prairies holds out the best promise of continued life
+and avoidance of tuberculosis. There is another scheme afoot of which,
+perhaps, Don Joaquin as yet knows nothing. It began in the active mind
+of Sister Aquinas, and its present stage consists of innumerable
+prayers on her part that she may be able to establish out on the range
+a little hospital, served by nuns, for the resuscitation of patients
+threatened with consumption. She sees in the invalid priest a chaplain
+plainly provided as an answer to prayer; Mr. and Mrs. Kane, her
+confidants, see in the scheme immense occasion for unbridled bazaars and
+whist drives. All friends of Mr. Kane meet him on their guard, uncertain
+which of their possessions he may have it in his eye to raffle. Even as
+I write, I hear that another answer to the dear nun's prayers looms into
+sight. A widowed sister of her own, wealthy, childless and of profuse
+generosity, writes to her, and the burden of her song is that she would
+not mind (her chest having always been weak) going to the proposed
+sanatorium herself, at all events for a few years, and bringing with her
+Doctor Malone: Dr. Malone is of unparalleled genius in his profession,
+but tuberculous, and it is transparently plain that his kind and
+affluent friend wishes to finance him and remove him to an
+"anti-tuberculous air."
+
+It seems to me certain that Sister Aquinas's prayers will very soon be
+answered, and the sanatorium be a fact. She has, I know, mentally
+christened it already, "Mariquita" is to be its name.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+
+Mariquita's profession took place fourteen months after her father's
+second marriage. Her brother was already an accomplished fact; he was,
+indeed, six weeks old and present (not alone) on the occasion. He was
+startlingly like his father, a circumstance not adverse to his future
+comeliness as a man, but which made him a little portentous as a baby.
+Don Joaquin on the day of his birth wrote to the rector of the college
+whom he had met at Loretto with many additional inquiries. Mariquita
+first beheld her brother when, fortunately, his father and her own was
+not present, for she laughed terribly at the great little black creature
+with eyes and nose at present much too big. He looked about fifty and
+had all the solemnity of that distant period of his life.
+
+"_Isn't_ he a thorough Spaniard?" Sarella demanded, pretending to pout
+discontentedly. But Mariquita saw very clearly that she was as proud of
+her baby as Don Joaquin himself. Since his birth Sarella's letters had
+been full of him, and she thought of _his_ clothes now. She had
+persuaded her husband, as a thank-offering for his son, to give a
+considerable piece of ground, in a beautiful situation, not a mile from
+the homestead, as the site of the future Church, Convent, and
+Sanatorium.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The beautiful and bright chapel of the Carmelite convent was free of
+people; two prie-dieus, side by side, had been placed at the entrance of
+the church. Towards these Mariquita, dressed as a bride, walked, leaning
+on her father's arm. She had always possessed the rare natural gift of
+walking beautifully. No one in the church had ever seen a bride more
+beautiful, more radiant, or more distinguished by unlearned grace and
+dignity.
+
+Among the congregation, but nearest to the two prie-dieus, knelt
+Sarella and Mr. Gore.
+
+Behind their grille the nuns were singing the ancient Latin hymn of
+invocation to the Holy Ghost.
+
+Presently the Archbishop in noble words set out the Church's doctrine
+and attitude concerning "Holy Religion," especially in reference to the
+Orders called Contemplative, for no Catholic Order of religion can be
+anything but contemplative, in its own degree and fashion. He dwelt upon
+the thing called Vocation, and the vocation of every human soul to
+heaven, each by its own road of service, love, and obedience; then upon
+the more exceptional vocation of some, whereby God calls them to come to
+Him by roads special and less thronged by travellers to the Golden Gate;
+pointing out that the Church, unwavering guardian of Christian liberty,
+in every age insisted on the freedom of such souls to accept that Divine
+summons as the rest are free to go to Him by the ways of His more
+ordinary and usual Providence. He spoke of the Church's prudence in this
+as in all else, and of the courses enjoined by her to enable a sound
+judgment to be made as to the reality of such exceptional vocation; and
+so of postulancy, novitiate, and profession.
+
+His words ended, the "bride" and her father rose from their knees and
+after (on his part the usual genuflection) and on hers a slow and
+profound reverence, they turned and walked down the church as they had
+come, she leaning upon his arm. After them the whole congregation moved
+out of the chapel, and went behind them to the high wooden gates behind
+which was the large garden of the "enclosure." Grouped before these
+gates all waited, listening to the nuns slowly advancing towards them
+from the other side, out of sight, but audible, for they were singing as
+they came. Slowly the heavy gates opened inwards, and the Carmelites
+could be seen. In front stood one carrying a great wooden crucifix. The
+faces of none of them could be seen, for their long black veils hung,
+before and behind, down to the level of their knees, leaving only a
+little of the brown habit visible.
+
+Mariquita embraced her father, and Sarella spoke a low word to Gore,
+who stood on one side of Sarella, went forward with a low reverence
+towards the Crucifix, kissed its feet, and then turned; with a profound
+curtesy she greeted those who had gathered to see her entrance into Holy
+Religion, and took her farewell of "the world," the gates closed slowly,
+and among her Sisters she went back to the chapel.
+
+The congregation returned thither also. Many were softly weeping; poor
+Sarella was crying bitterly. Her husband was not unmoved, but his grave
+dignity was not broken by tears. Gore could not have spoken, but there
+was no occasion for speech.
+
+Behind the nun's grille in the chapel the little community was gathered,
+Mariquita among them, no longer in her bride's dress, but in the brown
+habit without scapular or leathern belt.
+
+The Archbishop advanced close to the grille and put to her many
+questions. What did she ask? Profession in the order of holy religion of
+Mount Carmel. Was this of her own free desire? Yes. Had any coerced or
+urged her to it? No one. Did she believe that God Himself had called her
+to it? Yes. And many other questions.
+
+Then the Archbishop blessed the scapular, and it was put upon her by her
+Sisters, as in the case of the belt. So with each article of her nun's
+dress, sandals and veil.
+
+Thereafter, upon ashes, she lay upon the ground covered by a Pall, and
+De Profundis was sung.
+
+So the solemn rite proceeded to its end. Afterwards the new Religious
+sat in the parlor of the grille, or "speak-room," and the witnesses kept
+it full for a long time, as in succession they went to talk to her where
+she sat behind the grille.
+
+The last of all was Gore. He only went in as the last of the groups came
+out.
+
+"I was afraid you might not come," Mariquita told him. "Thank you for
+coming. If you had not come I should have been afraid that you felt it
+sad. There is nothing sad about it, is there?"
+
+"Indeed nothing."
+
+There was something in her voice that told him she was gayer than of
+old, happy she had always been. Though she smiled radiantly she did not
+laugh as she said:
+
+"I know the _ceremonies_ are rather harrowing to the lookers-on. (I
+heard someone sob--dear Sarella, I'm afraid.) But not to _us_. One is
+not sad because one has been allowed to do the one thing one wanted to
+do? Is one?"
+
+"Not when it is a great, good thing like this."
+
+"Ah, how kind you are! I always told you you were the kindest person I
+had ever met. Yes the _thing_ is great and good--only you must help me
+to do it in God's own way, in the way He wishes it done. You will not
+get tired of helping, by your prayers for me, will you?"
+
+"Of course I never shall."
+
+Presently she said, not laughing now either, but with a ripple like the
+laughter of running water in her voice, "You can't think how I like it
+all, how amusing some of it is! One has to do 'manual labor'--washing
+pots and pans, and cleaning floors; I believe it is supposed to be a
+little humiliating, and meant to keep us humble. And you know how used
+I am to it. I'm afraid of its making me conceited--I do it so much
+better than the Sisters who never did anything like that at home. Mother
+Prioress is always afraid, too, that I shan't eat enough, and that I
+shall say too many prayers. I fell into a pond we have in our garden,
+and she was terrified, thinking I must be drowned; no one could drown in
+it without standing on her head. I was trying to get a water-lily, so I
+fell in and came out frightfully muddy and smelly, too.... You must be
+kind to Sarella; she is so good, and has been so good to me. I shall
+never forget what you and she did for me. Write to her if you go away,
+and tell her all about yourself."
+
+"What there is to tell."
+
+"Oh, there will be lots. You are not such a bad letter-writer as
+that...."
+
+So they talked, the small, trivial, kindly talk that belongs to
+friendship, and showed him that Mariquita was more Mariquita than ever,
+now she was Sister Consuelo. Her father liked the Spanish name, without
+greatly realizing its reference to Our Lady of Good Counsel.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mariquita, by John Ayscough
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mariquita, by John Ayscough
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+Title: Mariquita
+       A Novel
+
+Author: John Ayscough
+
+Release Date: April 22, 2012 [EBook #39498]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARIQUITA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/tp.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<h1>MARIQUITA</h1>
+
+<h3>A Novel</h3>
+
+<h2>BY JOHN AYSCOUGH</h2>
+
+
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">New York, Cincinnati, Chicago</span><br />
+BENZIGER BROTHERS</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1922, by Benziger Brothers</span></p>
+
+<p class="center">Printed in the United States of America</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p class="center">TO<br />
+
+SENORITA MARIQUITA GUTIERREZ</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Senorita</span>,</p>
+
+<p>It is, indeed, kind of you to condone, by your acceptance of the
+dedication of this small book, the theft of your name, perpetrated
+without your knowledge, in its title. And in thanking you for that
+acceptance I seize another opportunity of apologizing for that theft.</p>
+
+<p>I need not tell you that in drawing Mariquita's portrait I have not been
+guilty of the further liberty of attempting your own, since we have
+never met, except on paper, and you belong to that numerous party of my
+friends known to me only by welcome and kind letters. But I hope there
+may be a nearer likelihood of my meeting you than there now can be of my
+seeing your namesake.</p>
+
+<p>That you and some others may like her I earnestly trust: if not it must
+be the fault of my portrait, drawn perhaps with less skill than
+respectful affection.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">John Ayscough.</span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>MARIQUITA</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+
+<p>A whole state, as big as England and Wales, and then half as big again,
+tilting smoothly upward towards, but never reaching, the Great Divide:
+the tilt so gradual that miles of land seem level; a vast sun-swept,
+breeze-swept upland always high above the level of the far, far-off sea,
+here in the western skirts of the state a mile above it. Its sky-scape
+always equal to its landscape, and dominant&mdash;as the sky can never be
+imagined in shut lands of close valleys, where trees are forever at war
+with the air and with the light.</p>
+
+<p>Here light and life seeming twin and inseparable: and the wind itself
+but the breathing of the light. What is called, by the foolish, a
+featureless country, that is with huge, fine features, not to be sought
+for but insistent, regnant, everywhere: space, tangible and palpable,
+height inevitably perceptible and recognizable in all the unviolated
+light, in the winds' smash, and the sun's, in the dancing sense of
+freedom: yet that dancing not frivolous, but gladly solemn.</p>
+
+<p>As to <i>little</i> features they are slurred (to the slight glance) in the
+vast unity: but look for them, and they are myriad. The riverbanks hold
+them, between prairie-lip and water. The prairie-waves hold them. Life
+is innumerably present, though to the hasty sight it seems primarily and
+distinctly absent. There are myriads of God's little live preachers,
+doing each, from untold ages to untold ages, the unnoted things set them
+by Him to do, as their big brothers the sun and the wind, the rain and
+the soil do.</p>
+
+<p>Of the greater beasts fewer but plenty&mdash;fox, and timber-wolf, and
+coyote, and still to-day an antelope here and there.</p>
+
+<p>Of men few. Their dwellings parted by wide distances. Their voices
+scarce heard where no dwelling is at hand. But the dwellings, being
+solitary and rare, singularly home-stamped.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Mariquita came out from the homestead, where there was nobody, and stood
+at its verge (where the prairie began abruptly) where there was nobody.
+She was twenty years old and had lived five of them here on the prairie,
+since her mother died, and she had come home to be her father's daughter
+and housekeeper, and all the servant he had. She was hardly taller now,
+and more slim. Her father did not know she was beautiful&mdash;at first he
+had been too much engaged in remembering her mother, who had been very
+blonde and fair, not at all like her. Her own skin was dark; and her
+rich hair was dark; her grave, soft, deep eyes were dark, though
+hazel-dark, not black-dark: whereas her mother's hair had been
+sunny-golden, and her eyes bright (rather shallow) blue, and her skin
+all white and rose.</p>
+
+<p>Her mother had taught school, up in Cheyenne, in Wyoming, and had been
+of a New England family of Puritans. Her father's people had come, long
+ago, from Spain, and he himself had been born near the desert in New
+Mexico: his mother may have been Indian&mdash;but a Catholic, anyway.</p>
+
+<p>So, no doubt, was José: though he had little occasion to remember it. It
+was over fifty miles to the nearest church and he had not heard Mass for
+years. He had married his Protestant wife without any dispensation, and
+a judge had married them.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless when the child came, he had made the mother understand she
+must be of his Church, and had baptized her himself. When Mariquita was
+ten years old he sent her to the Loretto nuns, out on the heights beyond
+Denver, where she had been confirmed, and made her first Communion, and
+many subsequent Communions.</p>
+
+<p>For five years now she had had to "hear Mass her own way." That is to
+say, she went out upon the prairie, and, in the shade of a tree-clump,
+took her lonely place, crossed herself at the threshold of the shadow,
+and genuflected towards where she believed her old school was, with its
+chapel, and its Tabernacle. Then, out of her book she followed the
+Ordinary of the Mass, projecting herself in mind and fancy into that
+worshipping company, picturing priest and nuns and school-fellows. At
+the <i>Sanctus</i> she rang a sheep-bell, and deepened all her Intention. At
+the Elevation she rang it again, in double triplet, though she could
+elevate only her own solitary soul. At first she had easily pictured all
+her school-fellows in their remembered places&mdash;they were all grown up
+and gone away home now. The old priest she had known was dead, as the
+nuns had sent her word, and she had to picture <i>a</i> priest, unknown,
+featureless, instead of him. The nuns' faces had somewhat dimmed in
+distinctness too. But she could picture the large group still. At the
+Communion she always made a Spiritual Communion of her own&mdash;that was why
+she always "heard her Mass" early, so as to be fasting.</p>
+
+<p>Once or twice, at long intervals, she had been followed by one of the
+cowboys: but the first one had seen her face as she knelt, and gone
+away, noiselessly, with a shy, red reverence. Her father had seen the
+second making obliquely towards her tree-clump, had overtaken him and
+inquired grimly if he would like a leathering. "When Mariquita's at
+church," said José, "let her be. She's for none of us then."</p>
+
+<p>And they let her be: and her tree-clump became known as Mariquita's
+Church by all the cowboys.</p>
+
+<p>One by one they fell in love with her (her father grimly conscious, but
+unremarking) and one by one they found nothing come of it. Whether he
+would have objected <i>had</i> anything come of it he did not say, though
+several had tried to guess.</p>
+
+<p>To her he never spoke of it, any more than to them: he hardly spoke to
+her of anything except the work&mdash;which she did carefully, as if
+carelessly. If she had neglected it, or done it badly, he would have
+rebuked her: that, he considered, was parental duty: as she needed no
+rebuke he said nothing; his ideas of paternal duty were bounded by
+paternal correction and a certain cool watchfulness. His watchfulness
+was not intrusive: he left her chiefly to herself, perceiving her to
+require no guidance. In all her life he never had occasion to complain
+that anything she did was "out of place"&mdash;his notion of the severest
+expression of disapproval a father could be called upon to utter.</p>
+
+<p>It was, in his opinion, to be taken for granted that a parent was
+entitled to the affection of his child, and that the child was entitled
+to the affection of her father. He neither displayed his affection nor
+wished Mariquita to display hers. Nor was there in him any sensible
+feeling of love for the girl. Her mother he had loved, and it was a
+relief to him that his daughter was wholly unlike her. It would have
+vexed him had there been any challenging likeness&mdash;would have resented
+it as a tacit claim, like a rivalry.</p>
+
+<p>Joaquin was lonelier than Mariquita. He did not like being called "Don
+Joaquin"; he preferred being known by his surname, as "Mr. Xeres." One
+of the cowboys, a very ignorant lad from the East, had supposed
+"Wah-Keen" to be a Chinese name, and confided his idea to the others.
+Don Joaquin had overheard their laughter and been enraged by its cause
+when he had learned it.</p>
+
+<p>He had not married till he was a little over thirty, being already well
+off by then, and he was therefore now past fifty on this afternoon when
+Mariquita came out and stood all alone where the homestead as it were
+rejoined the prairie. At first her long gaze, used to the great
+distances, was turned westward (and south a little) towards where, miles
+upon miles out of sight, lay the Mile High City, and Loretto, and the
+Convent, and all that made her one stock of memories.</p>
+
+<p>The prairie was as empty to such a gaze as so much ocean.</p>
+
+<p>But the sun-stare dazzled her, and she turned eastward; half a mile from
+her, that way, lay the river, showing nothing at this distance: its
+water, not filling at this season a fifth of the space between banks was
+out of sight: the low scrub within its banks was out of sight. Even its
+lips, of precisely even level on either side, were not discernible. But
+where she knew the further lip was, she saw two riders, a man and a
+woman. A moment after she caught sight of them they disappeared&mdash;had
+ridden down into the river-bed. The trail had guided them, and they
+could miss neither the way nor the ford.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless she walked towards where they were&mdash;though her father might
+possibly have thought her doing so out of place.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Up over the sandy river-bed came the two strangers, and Mariquita stood
+awaiting them.</p>
+
+<p>The woman might be thirty, and was, she perceived (to whom a saddle was
+easier than a chair) unused to riding. She was a pretty woman, with a
+sort of foolish amiability of manner that might mean nothing. The man
+was younger&mdash;perhaps by three years, and rode as if he had always known
+how to do it, but without being saddle-bred, without living chiefly on
+horseback.</p>
+
+<p>His companion was much aware of his being handsome, but Mariquita did
+not think of that. She, however, liked him immediately&mdash;much better than
+she liked the lady. The lady was not, in fact, quite a lady; but the
+young man was a gentleman; and perhaps Mariquita had never known one.</p>
+
+<p>"Is this," inquired the blonde lady&mdash;pointing, though inaccurately, as
+if to indicate Mariquita's home, "where Mr. Xeres lives, please?"</p>
+
+<p>She pronounced the X like the x's in Artaxerxes.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly. He is my father."</p>
+
+<p>"Then your mother is my Aunt Margaret," said the lady in the smart
+clothes that looked so queer on an equestrian.</p>
+
+<p>"My mother unfortunately is dead," Mariquita informed her, with a
+simplicity that made the wide-open blue eyes open wider still, and
+caused their owner to decide that the girl was "awfully Spanish."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Sarah Jackson assumed (with admirable readiness) an expression of
+pathos.</p>
+
+<p>"How very sad! I do apologize," she murmured, as if the decease of her
+aunt were partly her fault.</p>
+
+<p>The young man was amused&mdash;not for the first time&mdash;by his
+fellow-traveller: but he did not show it.</p>
+
+<p>"You couldn't help it," said Mariquita.</p>
+
+<p>("How very Spanish!" thought her cousin.)</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you did not know," the girl added, "or you would not have
+said anything to hurt me. And my mother's death happened five years
+ago."</p>
+
+<p>"Not <i>really</i>!" cried the deceased lady's niece. "How wholly
+unexpected!"</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't very sudden," Mariquita explained. "She was ill for three
+months."</p>
+
+<p>"My father was quite unaware of it&mdash;entirely so. He died, in fact, just
+about that time. And Aunt Margaret and he were (so unfortunately!)
+hardly on terms. Personally I always (though a child) had the strongest
+affection for Aunt Margaret. I took her part about her marriage. Papa's
+<i>own</i> second marriage struck me as less defensible."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>My</i> father only married once," said Mariquita; "he is a widower."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, quite so! I wish mine had remained so. My stepmother&mdash;but we all
+have our faults, no doubt. We did <i>not</i> live agreeably after her third
+marriage&mdash;" (Mariquita was getting giddy, and so, perhaps, was Miss
+Jackson's fellow-traveller.)</p>
+
+<p>"I could not, in fact, live," that lady serenely continued, with a smile
+of lingering sweetness, "and finally we differed completely. (Not
+noisily, on my part, nor roughly but irrevocably.) Hence my resolve to
+turn to Aunt Margaret, and my presence here&mdash;blood <i>is</i> thicker than
+water, when you come to think of it."</p>
+
+<p>"I met Miss Jackson at &mdash;&mdash;," her fellow-traveller explained, "and we
+made acquaintance&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Introduced by Mrs. Plosher," Miss Jackson put in again with singular
+sweetness. "Mrs. Plosher's boarding-house was recommended to me by two
+ministers. Mr. Gore was likewise her guest, and coming, as she was
+aware, to your father's."</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin, besides the regular cowboys, had from time to time taken a
+sort of pupil or apprentice, who paid instead of being paid. Mariquita
+had not been informed that this Mr. Gore was expected.</p>
+
+<p>"So," Mr. Gore added, "I begged Miss Jackson to use one of my horses,
+and I have been her escort."</p>
+
+<p>"So coincidental!" observed that lady, shaking her head slightly.
+"Though really&mdash;now I find my aunt no longer presiding here&mdash;I
+<i>really</i>&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Don Joaquin expressed no surprise at Mr. Gore's arrival, and no rapture
+at that of Miss Jackson. But he appeared to take it for granted both
+would remain&mdash;as they did.</p>
+
+<p>He saw more of the young man than of the young woman, which seemed to
+Mariquita to account for his preferring the latter. <i>She</i> had to see
+more of the lady. Miss Jackson was undeniably pretty, and instantly
+recognized as such by the cowboys: but she "kept her distance," and
+largely ignored their presence&mdash;a fact not unobserved by Don Joaquin,
+who inwardly commended her prudence. Of Mr. Gore she took more notice,
+as was natural, owing to their previous acquaintance. She spoke of him,
+however, to her host, as a lad, and hinted that at her age, lads were
+tedious; while frequent in allusion to a certain Eastern friend of hers
+(Mr. Bluck, a man of large means and great capacity) whose married
+daughter was her closest acquaintance.</p>
+
+<p>"Carolina was older than me at school," she would admit, "but she was
+more to my taste than those of my own age. Maturity wins me. Youth is so
+raw!"</p>
+
+<p>"What you call underdone," suggested Don Joaquin, who had talked English
+for forty years, and translated it still, in his mind, into Spanish.</p>
+
+<p>"Just that," Sarah agreed. "You grasp me."</p>
+
+<p>He didn't then, though he would sooner or later, thought the cowboys.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Jackson, then, ignored the cowboys, and gave all the time she could
+spare from herself to Mariquita. When not with Mariquita she was sewing,
+being an indefatigable dressmaker. She called it her "studies."</p>
+
+<p>"It is essential (out here in the wilderness) that I should not neglect
+my studies, and run to seed," she would say, as she smilingly retreated
+into her bedroom, where there were no books.</p>
+
+<p>Mariquita would not have been sorry had she "studied" more. Sarah did
+not fit into her old habits of life, and when they were together
+Mariquita felt lonelier than she had ever done before. Indoors she did
+not find the young woman so incongruous&mdash;but when they were out on the
+prairie together the elder girl seemed somehow altogether impossible to
+reconcile with it.</p>
+
+<p>"One might sketch," Miss Jackson would observe. "One <i>ought</i> to keep up
+one's sketching: I feel it to be a duty&mdash;don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. I can't sketch. It can't be a duty in my case."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, but in <i>mine</i>! I <i>know</i> I ought. But there's no feature." And she
+slowly waved her parasol round the horizon as though defying a "feature"
+to supervene from any point of the compass.</p>
+
+<p>Though she despised her present neighborhood, Sarah never hinted at any
+intention of leaving it: and it became apparent that her host would not
+have liked her to go away. That her presence was a great thing for
+Mariquita it suited him to assume, but he saw no necessity for
+discussing the matter, nor ascertaining what might in fact be his
+daughter's opinion.</p>
+
+<p>"I think," he said instead, "it will be better we call your cousin
+'Sarella'. It is her name Sarah and Ella. 'Sarella' sounds more
+fitting."</p>
+
+<p>So he and Mariquita thenceforth called her "Sarella."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Don Joaquin never thought much of Robert Gore; he failed, from the
+first, to "take to him." It had not delighted him that "Sarella" should
+arrive under his escort, though how she could have made her way up from
+Maxwell without him, he did not trouble to discuss with himself. At
+first he had thought it almost inevitable that the young man should make
+those services of his a claim to special intimacy with the lady to whom
+he had accidentally been useful. As it became apparent that Gore made no
+such claim, and was not peculiarly inclined to intimacy with his late
+fellow-traveller, Don Joaquin was half disposed to take umbrage, as
+though the young man were in a manner slighting Miss Jackson&mdash;his own
+wife's niece.</p>
+
+<p>As there were only two women about the place, indifference to one of
+them (and that one, in Don Joaquin's opinion, by far the more
+attractive) might be accounted for by some special inclination towards
+the other. Was Gore equally indifferent to Mariquita?</p>
+
+<p>Now, at present, Mariquita's father was not ready to approve any
+advances from the stranger in that direction. He did not feel he knew
+enough about him. That he was sufficiently well off, he thought
+probable; but in that matter he must have certainty. And besides, he
+thought Gore was sure to be a Protestant. Now he had married a
+Protestant himself: and that his wife had been taken from him in her
+youth had been, he had silently decided, Heaven's retribution. Besides,
+a girl was different. A man might do things she might not. <i>He</i> had
+consulted his own will and pleasure only; but Mariquita was not
+therefore free to consult hers. A Catholic girl should give herself only
+to a Catholic man.</p>
+
+<p>That Mariquita and Gore saw little of each other he was pretty sure, but
+it was not possible they should see nothing. And it soon became his
+opinion that, without much personal intercourse, they were interested in
+each other.</p>
+
+<p>Mariquita listened (without often looking at him) when Gore talked, in a
+manner he had never yet observed in her. Gore's extreme deference
+towards the girl, his singular and almost aloof courtesy was, the old
+man conceived, not only breeding and good manners, but the sign of some
+special way in which she had impressed him; as if he had, at sight,
+perceived in her something unrevealed to her father himself. In this, as
+in most things, Don Joaquin was correct in his surmise. He was shrewd in
+surmise to the point almost of cleverness, though by no means an
+infallible judge of character. It did not, however, occur to him that
+the young stranger was right in this fancied perception, that in
+Mariquita there was something higher and finer than anything divined by
+her father, who had never gone beyond admitting that, so far, he had
+perceived in her nothing out of place.</p>
+
+<p>If anything out of place should now appear he would speak; meanwhile he
+remained, as his habit was, silent and watchful; not rendered more
+appreciative of his daughter by the stranger's appreciation, and not
+inclined by that appreciation more favorably to the stranger himself.</p>
+
+<p>That Gore was not warmly welcomed by the cowboys neither surprised nor
+troubled him. There were no quarrels, and that was enough. He did not
+expect them to be delighted by the advent of a foreigner in a position
+not identical with their own. What they did for pay, he paid for being
+taught to do&mdash;that was the theory, though in fact Gore did not seem to
+need much teaching. Some, of course, he did need: prairie-lore he could
+not know, however practised he might be as a mere horseman. Don Joaquin
+was chiefly a horse-raiser and dealer, though he dealt also in cattle
+and even in sheep. By this time he had the repute of being wealthy.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was true that the actual intercourse between Mariquita and her
+father's apprentice or pupil was much less frequent or close than might
+be imagined by anyone strange to the way of life of which they formed
+two units.</p>
+
+<p>At meals they sat at the same table, but during the greater part of
+every day he was out upon the range, and she at home, within the
+homestead, or near it. Yet it was also true that between them there was
+something not existing between either and any other person: a friendship
+mostly silent, an interest not the less real or strong because of the
+silence. To Gore she was a study, of profounder interest than any book
+he knew. To make a counter-study of him would have been alien from
+Mariquita's nature and character; but his presence, which she did not
+ponder, or consider, as he did hers, brought something into her life.
+Perhaps it chiefly made her less lonely by revealing to her how lonely
+she had been. Of his beauty she never thought&mdash;never till the end. Of
+hers he thought much less as he became more and more absorbed in
+herself&mdash;though its fineness was always more and more clearly perceived
+by him.</p>
+
+<p>On that first afternoon, when he had first seen her, it had instantly
+struck him as possessing a quality of rarity, elusive and never to be
+defined. Miss Jackson's almost gorgeous prettiness, her brilliant
+coloring, her attractive shapeliness, had been hopelessly and finally
+vulgarized by the contrast&mdash;as the two young women stood on the level
+lip of the river-course in the unsparing, unflattering light.</p>
+
+<p>That Miss Jackson promptly decided that Mariquita was stupid, he had
+seen plainly; and he had not had the consolation of knowing that she was
+stupid herself. She was, he knew, wise enough in her generation, and by
+no means vacant of will or purpose. But she was, he saw, stupid in
+thinking her young hostess so. Slow, in some senses, Mariquita might be;
+not swift of impression, though tenacious of impression received, nor
+willing to be quick in jumping to shrewd (unflattering) conclusion, yet
+likely to stick hard to an even harsh conclusion once formed.</p>
+
+<p>These, however, were slight matters. What was not slight was the sense
+she gave him of nobility: her simplicity itself noble, her complete
+acquiescence in her own complete ignorance of experience&mdash;her innate,
+unargued conviction of the little consequence of much, often highly
+desired, experience.</p>
+
+<p>Of the world she knew nothing, socially, geographically even. Of women
+her knowledge was (as soon he discovered) a mere memory, a memory of a
+group of nuns&mdash;for her other companions at the Convent had been
+children. Of men she knew only her father and his cowboys. And no one,
+he perceived, knew her.</p>
+
+<p>But Gore did not believe her mind vacant. That rare quality could not
+have been in her beauty if it had been empty. Yet&mdash;there was something
+greater than her mind behind her face. The shape of that perception had
+entered instantly into his own mind; and the perception grew and
+deepened daily, with every time he was in her presence, with every
+recollection of her in absence.</p>
+
+<p>Her mind might be a garden unsown. But behind her face was the light of
+a lamp not waiting to be lit, but already lighted (he surmised) at the
+first coming of conscious existence, and burning steadily ever since.
+Whose hand had lighted it he did not know yet, though he knew that the
+lamp, shining behind her face, her mere beauty, was her soul. Her father
+was not mistaken in his notion that the young man regarded the girl to
+whom he addressed so little of direct speech, with a veneration that
+disconcerted Don Joaquin and was condemned by him as out of place. Not
+that he, of course, found fault with <i>respect</i>: absence of that he would
+grimly have resented; but a <i>culte</i>, like Gore's, a reverence literally
+devout, seemed to the old half-Indian Latin, high-falutin, unreal: and
+Don Joaquin abhorred unrealities.</p>
+
+<p>Probably the young man condemned the old as hide-bound in obtuseness of
+perception in reference to his daughter. As a jewel of gold in a swine's
+snout she may well have seemed to him. If so, some inkling of the fact
+would surely penetrate the old horse-raiser's inner, taciturn, but
+acutely watchful consciousness. His hide was by no means too thick for
+that. And, if so again, that perception would not enhance his
+appreciation of the critic.</p>
+
+<p>Elderly fathers are not universally more flattered by an exalted
+valuation of their daughters than by an admiring estimation of
+themselves.</p>
+
+<p>To himself, indeed, Gore was perfectly respectful. And he had to admit
+that the stranger learned his work well and did it well&mdash;better than the
+cowboys whom Don Joaquin was not given to indulge in neglect or
+slackness.</p>
+
+<p>He had a notion that the cowboys considered Gore too respectable&mdash;as to
+which their master held his judgment in suspense. In a possible
+son-in-law respectability, unless quite suspiciously excessive, would
+not be much "out of place"&mdash;not that Don Joaquin admitted more than the
+bare possibility, till he had fuller certainty as to the stranger's
+circumstances and antecedents, what he called his "conditions." Given
+satisfactory conditions, Mariquita's father began to be conscious that
+Gore as a possible son-in-law might simplify a certain course of his
+own.</p>
+
+<p>For Sarella continued steadily to commend herself to his ideas. He held
+her to be beautiful in the extreme, and her prudence he secretly
+acclaimed as admirable. That she was penniless he was quite aware, and
+he had a constant, sincere affection for money; but, unless penniless,
+such a lovely creature could hardly have been found on the prairie, or
+be expected to remain there; an elderly rich husband, he considered,
+would have much more hold on a young and lovely wife if she <i>were</i>
+penniless.</p>
+
+<p>That the young woman had expensive tastes he did not suppose, and he had
+great and not ungrounded confidence in his own power of repression of
+any taste not to his mind, should any supervene.</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin had two reasons for surveying with conditional approval the
+idea of marrying Sarella&mdash;when he should have made up his mind, which he
+had not yet done. One was to please himself: the other was in order that
+he might have a son. Mariquita's sex had always been against her. Before
+her arrival he had decided that his child must be a boy, and her being a
+girl was out of place. He disliked making money for some other man's
+wife.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Jack did not like Sarella, and so it was fortunate for that young person
+that Jack's opinion was of no sort of consequence. He had been longer on
+the range than anyone there except Don Joaquin, and he did much that
+would, if he had been a different sort of man, have entitled him to
+consider himself foreman. But he received smaller wages than anyone and
+never dreamt of being foreman. He was believed never to have had any
+other name but Jack, and was known never to have had but one suit of
+clothes, and his face and hands were much shabbier than his clothes,
+owing to a calendar of personal accidents. "That happened," he would
+say, "in the year the red bull horned my eye out," or "I mind&mdash;'twas in
+the Jenoorey that my leg got smashed thro' Black Peter rollin' on
+me...." He had been struck in the jaw by a splinter from a tree that had
+itself been struck by lightning, and the scar he called his "June
+mark." A missing finger of his right hand he called his Xmas mark
+because it was on Christmas Day that the gun burst which shot it off.
+These, and many other scars and blemishes, would have marred the beauty
+of an Antinoüs, and Jack had always been ugly.</p>
+
+<p>But, shabby as he was, he was marvellously clean, and Mariquita was very
+fond of him. His crooked body held a straight heart, loyal and kind, and
+a child's mind could not be cleaner. No human being suspected that Jack
+hated his master, whom he served faithfully and with stingily rewarded
+toil: and he hated him not because he was stingy to himself, but because
+Jack adored Mariquita, and accused her father of indifference to her. He
+was angry with him for leaving her alone to do all the work, and angry
+because nothing was ever done for her, and no thought taken of her.</p>
+
+<p>When Sarella and Gore came, Jack hoped that the young man would marry
+Mariquita and take her away&mdash;though <i>he</i> would be left desolate. Thus
+Mariquita would be happy&mdash;and her father be punished, for Jack clearly
+perceived that Don Joaquin did not care for Gore, and he did <i>not</i>
+perceive that Mariquita's departure might be convenient to her father.
+But Jack could not see that Gore himself did much to carry out that
+marriage scheme. That the young man set a far higher value on Mariquita
+than her father had ever done, Jack did promptly understand; but he
+could perceive no advances and watched him with impatience.</p>
+
+<p>As for Sarella, Jack was jealous of her importance: jealous that the old
+man made more of his wife's niece than of his own daughter; jealous that
+she had much less to do, and specially jealous that she had much smarter
+clothes. Jack could not see Sarella's beauty; had he possessed a
+looking-glass it might have been supposed to have dislocated his eye for
+beauty, but he possessed none&mdash;and he thought Mariquita as beautiful as
+the dawn on the prairie.</p>
+
+<p>To do her justice, Sarella was civil to the battered old fellow, but he
+didn't want her civility, and was ungrateful for it. Yet her civility
+was to prove useful. Jack lived in a shed at the end of the stables,
+where he ate and slept, and mended his clothes sitting up in bed, and
+wearing (then only) a large pair of spectacles, though half a pair would
+have been enough. He cooked his own food, though Mariquita would have
+cooked it for him if he would have let her.</p>
+
+<p>Sarella loved good eating, and on her coming it irritated her to see so
+much excellent food "made so little of." Presently she gave specimens of
+her own superior science, and Don Joaquin approved, as did the cowboys.</p>
+
+<p>"Jack," she said to him one day, "do you ever eat anything but stew from
+year's end to year's end?"</p>
+
+<p>"I eats bread, too, and likewise corn porridge," Jack replied coldly.</p>
+
+<p>"I could tell you how to make more of your meat&mdash;I should think you'd
+sicken of stew everlastingly."</p>
+
+<p>"There's worse than stew," he suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I</i> don't know what's worse, then," the young lady retorted, wrinkling
+her very pretty nose.</p>
+
+<p>"None. That's worse," said Jack, triumphantly.</p>
+
+<p>"It seems to me," Sarella observed thoughtfully, "as if you're growing a
+bit oldish to do for yourself, and have no one to do anything for you.
+An elderly man wants a woman to keep him comfortable."</p>
+
+<p>Jack snorted, but Sarella, undefeated, proceeded to put the case of his
+being ill. Who would nurse him?</p>
+
+<p>"Ill! I've too much to do for sech idleness. The Boss'd stare if I laid
+out to get ill."</p>
+
+<p>"Illness," Sarella remarked piously, "comes from Above, and may come any
+day. Haven't you anyone belonging to you, Jack? No sister, no niece; you
+never were married, I suppose, so I don't mention a daughter."</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>was</i> married, though," Jack explained, much delighted, "and had a
+daughter, too."</p>
+
+<p>"You quite surprise me!" cried Sarella, "quite!"</p>
+
+<p>"She didn't marry me for my looks, my wife didn't," chuckled Jack. "Nor
+yet for my money."</p>
+
+<p>"Out of esteem?" suggested Sarella.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't say, I'm sure. I never heerd her mention it. Anyway, it didn't
+last&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The esteem?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. The firm. She died&mdash;when Ginger was born. Since which I have
+remained a bachelord."</p>
+
+<p>"By Ginger you mean your daughter?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's what they called her. Her aunt took her, and <i>she</i> took the
+smallpox. But she didn't die of it. She's alive now."</p>
+
+<p>"Married, I daresay?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. Single. She's as like me as you're not," Jack explained summarily.</p>
+
+<p>Sarella laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"A good girl, though, I'll be bound," she hinted amiably.</p>
+
+<p>"She's never mentioned the contrary&mdash;in her letters."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, she writes! I'm glad she writes."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Miss Sarella. She writes most Christmasses. And she wrote
+lately, tho' it's not Christmas."</p>
+
+<p>"Not ill, I hope?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ill! She's an industrious girl with plenty o' sense ... but her aunt's
+dead, and she thinks o' taking a place in a boarding-house."</p>
+
+<p>"Jack," said Sarella, after a brief but pregnant pause of consideration,
+"bring her up here."</p>
+
+<p>Jack regarded her with a stare of undisguised amazement.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" Sarella persisted. "It would be better for you."</p>
+
+<p>"What's that to do with it?"</p>
+
+<p>"And better for Miss Mariquita. It's too much for Miss Mariquita&mdash;all
+the work she has to do."</p>
+
+<p>"That's true anyway."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it's true. Anyone can see that." (That Sarella saw it,
+considerably surprised Jack, and provided matter for some close
+consideration subsequently.)</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, Jack," she went on, "I'll tell you what. You go to Mr. Xeres
+and say you'd like your daughter to come and work for you...."</p>
+
+<p>"And he'd tell me to go and be damned."</p>
+
+<p>"But you'd not go. And he wouldn't want you to go. And <i>I'll</i> speak to
+him."</p>
+
+<p>Jack stared again. He hardly realized yet how much steadily growing
+confidence in her influence with "the Boss" Sarella felt. He made no
+promise to speak to him: but said "he'd sleep on it."</p>
+
+<p>With that sleep came a certain ray of comprehension. Miss Sarella was
+not thinking entirely of him and his loneliness, nor entirely of Miss
+Mariquita. He believed that she really expected the Boss would marry her
+(as all the cowboys had believed for some weeks) and he perceived, with
+some involuntary admiration of her shrewdness, that she had no idea of
+being left, if Miss Mariquita should marry and go away, to do all the
+work as she had done. Once arrived at this perception of the situation,
+Jack went ahead confident of Sarella's quietly persistent help. He had
+not the least dread of rough language. He had no sensitive dread of
+displeasing his master. He would like to have Ginger up at the range
+especially as Ginger's coming would take much of the work off Miss
+Mariquita's hands. He even made Don Joaquin suspect that if Ginger were
+not allowed to come he, Jack, would go, and make a home for her down in
+Maxwell.</p>
+
+<p>It did not suit Don Joaquin to lose Jack, and it suited him very well to
+listen to Sarella.</p>
+
+<p>So Ginger came, and proved, as all the cowboys agreed, a good sort,
+though quite as ugly as her father.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>"Mariquita," said her father one day, "does Sarella ever talk to you
+about religion?"</p>
+
+<p>Anything like what could be called a conversation was so rare between
+them that the girl was surprised, and it surprised her still more that
+he should choose that particular subject.</p>
+
+<p>"She asked me if we were Catholics."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course we are Catholics. You said so?"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't say 'of course,' but I said we were. She then asked if my
+mother had become one&mdash;on her marriage or afterwards."</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin heard this with evident interest, and, as Mariquita thought,
+with some satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>"What did you say?" he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>Mariquita glanced at him as if puzzled. "I told her that my mother
+never became a Catholic," she answered.</p>
+
+<p>"That pleased her?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. She did not seem pleased or displeased."</p>
+
+<p>"She did not seem glad that I had not insisted that my wife should be
+Catholic?"</p>
+
+<p>"She may have been glad&mdash;I did not see that she was."</p>
+
+<p>"You did not think she would have been angry if she had heard I had
+insisted that my wife should be Catholic?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; that did not appear to me."</p>
+
+<p>So far as Mariquita's information went, it satisfied her father. Only it
+was a pity Sarella should know that her aunt had not adopted his own
+religion.</p>
+
+<p>Mariquita had not probed the motive of his questions. Direct enough of
+<i>impression</i>, she was not penetrating nor astute in following the hidden
+working of other persons' minds.</p>
+
+<p>"It is," he remarked, "a good thing Sarella came here."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor thing! She had no home left&mdash;it was natural she should think of
+coming to her aunt."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, quite natural. And good for you also."</p>
+
+<p>"I was not lonely before&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But if I had died?"</p>
+
+<p>Mariquita had never thought of his dying; he was as strong as a tree,
+and she could not picture the range without him.</p>
+
+<p>"I never thought of you dying. You are not old, father."</p>
+
+<p>"Old, no! But suppose I had died, all the same&mdash;before Sarella
+came&mdash;what would you have done?"</p>
+
+<p>"I never thought of it."</p>
+
+<p>"No. That would have been out of place. But you could not have lived
+here, one girl all alone among all the men."</p>
+
+<p>"No, of course."</p>
+
+<p>"Now you have Sarella. It would be different."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes; if she wished to go on living here&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"If she went away to live somewhere else you could go with her."</p>
+
+<p>Mariquita did not see that that would be necessary, but she did not say
+so. She was not aware that her father was endeavoring to habituate her
+mind to the permanence of Sarella's connection with herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," he said casually, "you might marry&mdash;at any time."</p>
+
+<p>"I never thought of that," the girl answered, and he saw clearly that
+she never <i>had</i> thought of it. Gore would, he perceived, not have her
+for the asking; might have a great deal of asking to do, and might not
+succeed after much asking.</p>
+
+<p>It was not so clear to him that Gore himself was as well aware of that
+as he was.</p>
+
+<p>That she had never had any thoughts of marriage pleased him, partly
+because he would not have liked Gore to get what he wanted, so easily,
+and partly because it satisfied his notion of dignity in her&mdash;his
+daughter. It was really his own dignity in her he was thinking of.</p>
+
+<p>All the same, now that he knew she was not thinking of marrying the
+handsome stranger, he felt more clearly that (if Gore's "conditions"
+were suitable) the marriage might suit him&mdash;Don Joaquin.</p>
+
+<p>"There are," he observed sententiously, "only two ways for women."</p>
+
+<p>"Two ways?"</p>
+
+<p>"Marriage is the usual way. If God had wanted only nuns, He would have
+created women only. That one sees. Whereas there are women and men&mdash;so
+marriage is the ordinary way for women; and if God chooses there should
+be more married women than nuns, it shows He doesn't want too many
+nuns."</p>
+
+<p>The argument was new to Mariquita: she was little used to hear <i>any</i>
+abstract discussion from her father.</p>
+
+<p>"You have thought of it," she said; "I have never thought of all that."</p>
+
+<p>"There was no necessity. It might have been out of place. All the same
+it is true what I say."</p>
+
+<p>"But I think it is also true that to be a nun is the best way for some
+women."</p>
+
+<p>"Naturally. For some."</p>
+
+<p>Mariquita had no sort of desire to argue with him, or anyone; arguments
+were, she thought, almost quarrels.</p>
+
+<p>He, on his side, was again thinking of Sarella, and left the nuns
+alone.</p>
+
+<p>"It would," he said, "be a good thing if Sarella should become Catholic.
+If she talks about religion you can explain to her that there can be
+only one that is true."</p>
+
+<p>Mariquita did not understand (though everyone else did) that her father
+wished to marry Sarella, and, of course, she could not know that he was
+resolved against provoking further punishment by marrying a Protestant.</p>
+
+<p>"If I can," she said, slowly, "I will try to help her to see that. She
+does not talk much about such things. And she is much older than I am&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes; quite very much older," he agreed earnestly, though in fact
+Sarella appeared simply a girl to him.</p>
+
+<p>"And it would not do good for me to seem interfering."</p>
+
+<p>"But," he agreed with some adroitness, "though a blind person were older
+than you (who can see) you would show her the way?"</p>
+
+<p>Mariquita was not, at any rate, so blind as to be unable to see that her
+father was strongly desirous that Sarella should be a Catholic. It had
+surprised her, as she had no recollection of his having troubled himself
+concerning her own mother, his beloved wife, not having been one. Of
+course, she was glad, thinking it meant a deeper interest in religion on
+his own part.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Between Mariquita and her father there was little in common except a
+partial community of race; in nature and character they were entirely
+different. In her the Indian strain had only physical expression, and
+that only in the slim suppleness of her frame; she would never grow
+stout as do so many Spanish women.</p>
+
+<p>Whereas in her father the Indian blood had effects of character. He was
+not merely subtle like a Latin, but had besides the craft and cunning of
+an Indian. Yet the cunning seemed only an intensification of the
+subtlety, a deeper degree of the same quality and not an added separate
+quality. In fact, in him, as in many with the same mixture of race, the
+Indian strain and the Spanish were really mingled, not merely joined in
+one individual.</p>
+
+<p>Mariquita had, after all, only one quarter Spanish, and one Indian;
+whereas with him it was a quarter of half and half. She had, in actual
+blood, a whole half that was pure Saxon, for her mother's New England
+family was of pure English descent. Yet Mariquita seemed far more purely
+Spanish than her father; he himself could trace nothing of her mother in
+her, and in her character was nothing Indian but her patience.</p>
+
+<p>From her mother personally she inherited nothing, but through her mother
+she had certain characteristics that helped to make her very
+incomprehensible to Don Joaquin, though he did not know it.</p>
+
+<p>Gore, who studied her with far more care and interest, because to him
+she seemed deeply worth study, did not himself feel compelled to
+remember her triple strain of race. For to him she seemed splendidly,
+adorably simple. He was far from falling into Sarella's shallow mistake
+of calling that simplicity "stupidity"; to him it appeared a sublimation
+of purity, rarely noble and fine. That she was book-ignorant he knew, as
+well as that she was life-ignorant; but he did not think her
+intellectually narrow, even intellectually fallow. Along what roads her
+mind moved he could not, by mere study of her, discover; yet he was sure
+it did not stagnate without motion or life.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>About a month after the arrival of Sarella, one Saturday night at
+supper, that young person observed that Mr. Gore's place was vacant.</p>
+
+<p>Mariquita must equally have noted the fact, but she had said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't Mr. Gore coming to his supper?" Sarella asked her.</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin thought this out of place. His daughter's silence on the
+subject had pleased him better.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," Mariquita answered, glancing towards her father.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said; "he has ridden down to Maxwell."</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes one or other of the cowboys would ride down to Maxwell, and
+reappear, without question or remark.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder he did not mention he was going," Sarella complained.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course he mentioned it," Don Joaquin said loudly. "He would not go
+without asking me."</p>
+
+<p>"But to us ladies," Sarella persisted, "it would have been better
+manners."</p>
+
+<p>"That was not at all necessary," said Don Joaquin; "Mariquita would not
+expect it."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I</i> would, though. It ought to have struck him that one might have a
+communication for him. I should have had commissions for him."</p>
+
+<p>It was evident that Sarella had ruffled Don Joaquin, and it was the
+first time anyone had seen him annoyed by her.</p>
+
+<p>Next day, after the midday meal, Sarella followed Mariquita out of
+doors, and said to her, yawning and laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you miss Mr. Gore?"</p>
+
+<p>Mariquita answered at once and quite simply:</p>
+
+<p>"Miss him? He was never here till a month ago&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Nor was I," Sarella interrupted pouting prettily. "But you'd miss me,
+now."</p>
+
+<p>"Only you're not going away."</p>
+
+<p>"You take it for granted I shall stop, then?" (And Sarella looked
+complacent.) "That I'm a fixture."</p>
+
+<p>"I never thought of your going away," Mariquita answered, with a formula
+rather habitual to her. "Where would you go?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should decide on that when I decided to go." Sarella declared
+oracularly. But Mariquita took it with irritating calmness.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe you will decide to go," she said with that gravity and
+plainness of hers that often irritated Sarella&mdash;who liked <i>badinage</i>.
+"It would be useless."</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose," Sarella suggested, pinching the younger girl's arm playfully,
+"suppose I were to think of getting married. Shouldn't I have to go
+then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I never thought of that&mdash;" Mariquita was beginning, but Sarella pinched
+and interrupted her.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you <i>ever</i> think of anything?" she complained sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, often, of many things."</p>
+
+<p>"What things on earth?" (with sudden inquisitive eagerness.)</p>
+
+<p>"Just my own sort of things," Mariquita answered, without saying whether
+"her things" were on earth at all. Sarella pouted again.</p>
+
+<p>"You're not very confidential to a person."</p>
+
+<p>Mariquita weighed the accusation. "Perhaps," she said quietly, "I am not
+much used to persons. Since I came home from the convent there was no
+other girl here till you came."</p>
+
+<p>"So you're sorry I came!"</p>
+
+<p>"No; glad. I am glad you did that. It is a home for you. And I am sure
+my father is glad."</p>
+
+<p>"You think he likes my being here?" And Sarella listened attentively for
+the answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. You must see it."</p>
+
+<p>"You think he does not dislike me? He was cross with me last night."</p>
+
+<p>"He did not like you noticing Mr. Gore was away&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I noticed it&mdash;surely, he could not be jealous of that!"</p>
+
+<p>"I should not think he could be jealous," Mariquita agreed, too readily
+to please Sarella. "But I did not think of it. I am sure he does not
+dislike you. You cannot think he does."</p>
+
+<p>Sarella was far from thinking it. But she had wanted Mariquita to say
+more, and was only partly satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>He</i> would not like me to go away?" she suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no. The contrary."</p>
+
+<p>"Not even if it were advantageous to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"How advantageous?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I were to be going to a home of my own? Going, for instance, to be
+married?"</p>
+
+<p>"That would surprise him...."</p>
+
+<p>Sarella was not pleased at this.</p>
+
+<p>"Surprise him! Why should it surprise him that anyone should marry me?"</p>
+
+<p>"There is no reason. Only, he does not imagine that there <i>is</i> someone.
+If there is someone, he would suppose you had not been willing to marry
+him by your coming here instead."</p>
+
+<p>("Is she stupid or cautious?" Sarella asked herself. "She will say
+nothing.")</p>
+
+<p>Mariquita was neither cautious nor stupid. She was only ignorant of
+Sarella's purpose, and by no means awake to her father's.</p>
+
+<p>"It is terribly hot out here," Sarella grumbled, "and there is such a
+glare. I shall go in and study."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Mariquita did not go in too. She did not find it hot, nor did the glare
+trouble her. The air was full of life and vigor, and she had no sense of
+lassitude. There was, indeed, a breeze from the far-off Rockies, and to
+her it seemed cool enough, though the sun was so nearly directly
+overhead that her figure cast only a very stunted shadow of herself. In
+the long grass the breeze made a slight rustle, but there was no other
+sound.</p>
+
+<p>Mariquita did not want to be indoors; outside, here on the tilted
+prairie, she was alone and not lonely. The tilt of the vast space around
+her showed chiefly in this&mdash;that eastward the horizon was visibly lower
+than at the western rim of the prairie. The prairie was not really flat;
+between her and both horizons there lay undulations, those between her
+and the western rising into <i>mesas</i>, which, with a haze so light as only
+to tell in the great distance, hid the distant barrier of the Rocky
+Mountains, whose foothills even were beyond the frontiers of this State.</p>
+
+<p>She knew well where they were, though, and knew almost exactly beyond
+which point of the far horizon lay Loretto Heights, beyond Denver, and
+the Convent.</p>
+
+<p>Somehow the coming of these two new units to the range-life had pushed
+the Convent farther away still. But Mariquita's thoughts never rested in
+the mere memories hanging like a slowly fading arras around that
+long-concluded convent life. What it had given her was more than the
+memories and was hers still.</p>
+
+<p>As to the mere memories, she knew that with slow but increasing pace
+they were receding from her, till on time's horizon they would end in a
+haze, golden but vague and formless. Voices once clearly recalled were
+losing tone; faces, whose features had once risen before the eye of
+memory with little less distinctness than that with which she had seen
+them when physically present, arose now blurred like faces passing a
+fog. Even their individuality, depending less on feature than
+expression, was no longer easily recoverable.</p>
+
+<p>She had been used to remember this and that nun by her very footsteps;
+now the nuns moved, a mere group in one costume, soundlessly, with no
+footstep at all.</p>
+
+<p>Of this gradual loss of what had been almost her only private possession
+she made no inward wishful complaint; Mariquita was not morbid, nor
+melancholy. The operation of a natural law of life could not fill her
+with the poet's rebellious outcry. To all law indeed she yielded without
+protest, whether it implied submission without inward revolt to the mere
+shackles of circumstance, or submission to her father's dominance; for
+it was not in her fashion of mind to form hypothesis&mdash;such hypothesis,
+for instance, as that of her father calling upon her to take some course
+opposed to conscience. Though her gaze was turned towards the point of
+the horizon under which the Convent and its intimates were, it was not
+simply to dream of them that she yielded herself.</p>
+
+<p>All that life had had a centre&mdash;not for herself only, but for all there.
+The simplicity of the life consisted, above all, in the simplicity of
+its object. Its routine, almost mechanically regular, was not mechanical
+because of its central meaning. No doubt the "work" of the nuns was
+education, but their work of education was service of a Master. And the
+Master was Himself the real object, the centre of the work, as carried
+on within those quiet, busy walls. Mariquita no longer formed a part,
+though the work was still operative in her, and had not ceased with her
+removal from the workers; but she was as near as ever to its centre, and
+was now more concerned with the ultimate object of the work than with
+the work.</p>
+
+<p>Her memories were weakening in color and definiteness, but her
+possession was not decreased, her possession was the Master who
+possessed herself.</p>
+
+<p>The simplicity that Gore had from the first noted in her, without being
+able to inform himself wherein it consisted&mdash;but which he venerated
+without knowing its source, that he knew was noble&mdash;was first that
+Mariquita did in fact live and move and have her being, as nominally all
+His creatures do, in the Master of that vanished convent life. What the
+prairie was to her body, surrounding it, its sole background and scene
+and stage of action, He was to her inward, very vivid, wholly silent
+life; what the prairie was to her healthy lungs, He was to her soul, its
+breath, "inspiration." Banal and stale as such metaphor is, in her the
+two lives were so unified (in this was the rarity of her "simplicity")
+that it was at least completely accurate.</p>
+
+<p>With Mariquita that which we call the supernatural life was not
+occasional and spasmodic. That inspiration of Our Lord was not, as with
+so many, a gulp, or periodic series of gulps, but a breathing as steady
+and soundless as the natural breathing of her strong, sane, flawless
+body.</p>
+
+<p>She did not, like the self-conscious pietist, listen to it. She did not,
+like the pathological pietist, test its pulse or temperature. The
+pathological pietist is still self-student, though studious of self in a
+new relation; still breathes her own breath at second-hand, and remains
+indoors within the four walls of herself.</p>
+
+<p>Of herself Mariquita knew little. That God had given her, in truth,
+existence; that she knew. That <i>she</i> was, because He chose. That He had
+been born, and died, and lived again, for her sake, as much as for the
+sake of any one of all the saints, though not more than for the sake of
+the human being in all the world who thought least of Him: that she
+knew. That He loved her incomparably better than she could love herself
+or any other person&mdash;that she knew with a reality of knowledge greater
+than that with which any lover ever knows himself beloved by the lover
+who would give and lose everything for him. That He had already set in
+her another treasure, the capacity of loving Him&mdash;that also she knew
+with ineffable reverence and gladness, and that the power of loving Him
+grew in her, as the power of knowing Him grew.</p>
+
+<p>But concerning herself Mariquita knew little except such things as
+these. She had studied neither her own capacities nor her own
+limitations, neither her tastes, nor her gifts. That Sarella thought
+her stupid, she was hardly aware, and less than half aware that Sarella
+was wrong. No human creature had ever told her that she was beautiful,
+and she had never made any guess on the subject with herself. She never
+wondered if she were happy, or ever unjustly disinherited of the means
+of happiness. Whether, in less strait thrall of circumstance, she might
+be of more consequence, even of more use, she never debated. She had not
+dreamed of being heroic; had no chafing at absence of either sphere or
+capacity for being brilliant. Her life was passing in a silence
+singularly profound among the lives of God's other human creatures, and
+its silence, unhumanness, oblivion (that deepest of oblivion lying
+beneath what <i>has</i> been known though forgotten) did not vex her, and was
+never thought of. Her duties were coarse and common; but they were those
+God had set in her way and sight, and she had no impatience of them, no
+scorn for them, but just did them. They were not more coarse or common
+than those He had himself found to His hand, and done, in the house at
+Nazareth where Joseph was master, and, after Joseph, Mary was mistress,
+and He, their Creator, third, to obey and serve them.</p>
+
+<p>It would be greatly unjust to Mariquita to say that the monotone of her
+life was made golden by the bright haze in which it moved. She lived not
+in a dream, but in an atmosphere. She was not a dreamy person, moving
+through realities without consciousness of them. She saw all around her,
+with living interest, only she saw beyond them with interest deeper
+still, or rather their own significance for her was made deeper by her
+sense of what was beyond them, and to which they, like herself,
+belonged. She was very conscious of her neighbors, not only of the human
+neighbors, but also of the live creatures not human; and each of these
+had, in her reverence, a definite sacredness as coming like herself from
+the hand of God.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing pantheistic in this; seeing everything as God's she
+did not see it itself Divine, but every natural object was to her clear
+vision but a thread in the clear, transparent veil through which God
+showed Himself everywhere. When St. Francis "preached to the birds" he
+was in fact listening to their sermon to him; and Mariquita, in her
+close neighborly friendship with the small wild creatures of the
+prairie, was only worshipping the ineffable, kind friendliness of God,
+who had made, and who fed, them also. The love she gave them was only
+one of the myriad silent expressions of her love for Him, who loved
+them. They were easier and simpler to understand than her human
+neighbors. It was not that, for an instant, she thought them on the same
+plane of interest&mdash;but we must here interrupt ourselves as she was
+interrupted.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Mariquita had been alone a long time when Gore, riding home, came
+suddenly upon her.</p>
+
+<p>She was sitting where a clump of trees cast now a shadow, and it was
+only in coming round them that he saw her when already very near her.
+The ground was soft there, and his horse's hoofs had made scarcely any
+sound.</p>
+
+<p>She turned her head, and he saluted her, at the same moment slipping
+from the saddle.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you were far away," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been far away&mdash;at Maxwell. It has been a long ride."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that is a long way," she said. "But I never go there."</p>
+
+<p>"No? I went to hear Mass."</p>
+
+<p>She was surprised, never having thought that he was a Catholic.</p>
+
+<p>"I did not know you were a Catholic," she told him.</p>
+
+<p>"No wonder! I have been here a month and never been to Mass before."</p>
+
+<p>"It is so far. I never go."</p>
+
+<p>"You <i>are</i> a Catholic, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes; I think all Spaniards are Catholics."</p>
+
+<p>"But not all Americans," Gore suggested smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"No. And of course, we are Americans, my father and I."</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly. No doubt I knew your names, both surname and Christian name,
+were Spanish, and I supposed you were of Catholic descent&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Only," she interrupted with a quiet matter-of-factness, "you saw we
+never went to Mass."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps a priest comes here sometimes and gives you Mass."</p>
+
+<p>"No, never. If it were not so very far, I suppose my father would let me
+ride down to Maxwell occasionally, at all events. But he would not let
+me go alone, and none of the men are Catholics; besides, he would not
+wish me to go with one of them; and then it would be necessary to go
+down on Saturday and sleep there. Of course, he would not permit that.
+But," and she did not smile as she said this, "it must seem strange to
+you, who are a Catholic, to think that I, who am one also, should never
+hear Mass. Since I left the Convent and came home I do not hear it. That
+may scandalize you."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall never be scandalized by you," he answered, also without
+smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"That is best," she said. "It is generally foolish to be scandalized,
+because we can know so little about each other's case."</p>
+
+<p>She paused a moment, and he thought how little need she could ever have
+of any charitable suspension of judgment. He knew well enough by
+instinct, that this inability to hear Mass must be the great
+disinheritance of her life here on the prairie, her submission to it,
+her great obedience.</p>
+
+<p>"But," she went on earnestly, "I hope you will not take any scandal at
+my father either&mdash;from my saying that he would not permit my going down
+to Maxwell and staying there all night on Saturday so as to hear Mass
+on Sunday morning. (There is, you know, only one Mass there, and that
+very early, because the priest has to go far into the county on the
+other side of Maxwell to give another Mass.) We know no family down
+there with whom I could stay. He would think it impossible I should stay
+with strange people&mdash;or in an hotel. Our Spanish ideas would forbid
+that."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes; I can fully understand. You need not fear my being so stupid
+as to take scandal. I have all my life had enough to do being
+scandalized at myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, yes! That is so. One finds that always. Only one knows that God is
+more indulgent to one's faults than one has learned to be oneself; that
+patience comes so very slowly, and slower still the humility that would
+teach one to be never surprised at any fault in oneself."</p>
+
+<p>Gore reverenced her too truly to say, "Any fault would surprise <i>me</i> in
+you." He only assented to her words, as if they were plain and cold
+matter-of-fact, and let her go on, for he knew she had more to say.</p>
+
+<p>"I would like," she told him, "to finish about my father. Because to
+you he may seem just careless. You may think, 'But why should not <i>he</i>
+take her down to Maxwell and hear Mass himself also?' Coming from the
+usual life of Catholics to this life of ours on the prairies, it may
+easily occur to you like that. You cannot possibly know&mdash;as if you had
+read it in a book&mdash;a man's life like my father's. He was born far away
+from here, out in the desert&mdash;in New Mexico. His father baptized
+him&mdash;just as <i>he</i> baptized me. There was no priest. There was no Mass.
+How could he learn to think it a necessary part of life? no one can
+learn to think necessary what is impossible. From that desert he came to
+this wilderness; very different, but just as empty. No Mass here either,
+no priest. How could he be expected to think it necessary to ride far,
+far away to find Mass? It would be to him like riding away to find a
+picture gallery. He <i>couldn't</i> be away every Saturday and Sunday. That
+would not be possible; and what is not possible is no sin. And what is
+no sin on three Sundays out of four, or one Sunday out of two, how
+should it seem a sin on the other Sunday? I hope you will understand
+all that."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, yes! I hope you do not think I have been judging your father!
+That would be a great impertinence."</p>
+
+<p>"Towards God&mdash;yes. That is His business, and no one else understands it
+at all. No, I did not think you would have been judging. Only I thought
+you might be troubled a little. It is a great loss, my father's and
+mine, that we live out here where there is no Mass, and where there are
+no Sacraments. But Our Lord does the same things differently. It is not
+hard for Him to make up losses."</p>
+
+<p>One thing which struck the girl's hearer was that the grave simplicity
+of her tones was never sad. It seemed to him the perfection of
+obedience.</p>
+
+<p>"My father," she went on, "is very good. He always tells the truth.
+Those who deal in horses are said to tell many lies about them. He never
+does. He is very just&mdash;to the men, and everybody. And he does not grind
+them, nor does he insult them in reproof. He hates laziness and
+stupidity, and will not suffer either. Yet he does not gibe in finding
+fault nor say things, being master, to which they being servants may not
+retort. That makes fault-finding bitter and intolerable. He works very
+hard and takes no pleasure. He greatly loved my mother, and was in all
+things a true husband. That was a great burden God laid on him&mdash;the loss
+of her, but he carried it always in silence. You can hardly know all
+these things."</p>
+
+<p>Gore saw that she was more observant than he had fancied&mdash;that she had
+been conscious of criticism in him of her father, and was earnest in
+exacting justice for him.</p>
+
+<p>"But," he said, "I shall not forget them now."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall thank you for that," she told him, beginning to move forward
+towards the homestead that was full in sight, half a mile away. "And it
+will be getting very late. Tea is much later on Sunday, for the men like
+to sleep, but it will be time now."</p>
+
+<p>They walked on together, side by side, he leading his horse by the
+bridle hung loosely over his shoulder. The horse after its very long
+journey of to-day and yesterday was tired out, and only too willing to
+go straight to his stable.</p>
+
+<p>They did not now talk much. Don Joaquin, watching them as they came from
+the house door, saw that.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>"Mr. Gore came back with you," he said to Mariquita as she joined him.
+Gore had gone round to the stables with his horse.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. As he came back from Maxwell he passed the place where I was
+sitting, and we came on together&mdash;after talking for a time."</p>
+
+<p>Mariquita did not think her father was cross-examining her. Nor was he.
+He was not given to inquisitiveness, and seldom scrutinized her doings.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Gore," she continued, "went to Maxwell for the sake of going to
+Mass."</p>
+
+<p>"So he is a Catholic!" And Mariquita observed with pleasure that her
+father spoke in a tone of satisfaction. He had never before appeared to
+be in the least concerned with the religion of any of the men about the
+place.</p>
+
+<p>That night, after Sarella and Mariquita had gone to bed, Don Joaquin
+had another satisfaction. He and Gore were alone, smoking; all the large
+party ate together, but the cowboys went off to their own quarters after
+meals. Only Don Joaquin, his daughter, Sarella and Gore slept in the
+dwelling-house. So high up above sea-level, it was cold enough at night,
+and the log fire was pleasant.</p>
+
+<p>What gave him satisfaction was that Gore asked him about the price of a
+range, and whether a suitable one was to be had anywhere near.</p>
+
+<p>"It would not be," Don Joaquin bade him note, "the price of the range
+only. Without some capital it would be throwing money away to buy one."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. What would range and stock and all cost?"</p>
+
+<p>"That would depend on the size of the range, and the amount of stock it
+would bear. And also on whether the range were very far out, like this
+one. If it were near a town and the railway, it would cost more to buy."</p>
+
+<p>Gore quite understood that, and Don Joaquin spoke of "Blaine's" range.
+"It lies nearer Maxwell than this. But it is not so large, and Blaine
+has never made much of it&mdash;he had not capital enough to put on it the
+stock it should have had, and he was never the right man. A townsman in
+all his bones, and his wife towny too. And their girls worse. He <i>wants</i>
+to clear. He will never do good there."</p>
+
+<p>The two men discussed the matter at some length. It seemed to the elder
+of them that Gore would seriously entertain the plan, and had the money
+for the purchase.</p>
+
+<p>"I have thought sometimes," said Joaquin, "of buying Blaine's myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, I would not think of it if you wanted it. I would not even
+make any inquiry&mdash;that would be sending the price up."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. But, if you decide to go in for it, I shall not mind. I have land
+enough and stock enough, and work enough. I should have bought it if I
+had a son growing up."</p>
+
+<p>It was satisfactory to Don Joaquin to find that Gore could buy a large
+range and afford capital to stock it. If he went on with such a purchase
+it would prove him "substantial as to conditions." And he was a
+Catholic, also a good thing.</p>
+
+<p>Only Sarella should be a Catholic also. "So you went down to Maxwell to
+go to Mass," he said, just as they were putting out their pipes to go to
+bed. "That was not out of place. Perhaps one Saturday we may go down
+together."</p>
+
+<p>Gore said, of course, that he would be glad of his company.</p>
+
+<p>"It would not be myself only," Don Joaquin explained; "I should take my
+daughter and her cousin."</p>
+
+<p>When Gore had an opportunity of telling this to Mariquita she was full
+of gladness.</p>
+
+<p>"See," she said, "how strong good example is!"</p>
+
+<p>"Is your cousin, then, also a Catholic?" he asked, surprised without
+knowing why.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no! My father regrets it, and would like her to be one. That shows
+he thinks of religion more than you might have guessed."</p>
+
+<p>Gore thought that it showed something else as well. It did not, however,
+seem to have occurred to Mariquita that her father wanted to marry her
+cousin.</p>
+
+<p>Sarella strongly approved the idea of going down, all four of them
+together, to Maxwell some Saturday.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," she said, "it would be for two nights, at least. He
+couldn't expect <i>us</i> to ride back on the Sunday. It will be a treat&mdash;we
+must insist on starting early enough to get down there before the shops
+shut. I daresay there will be a theatre."</p>
+
+<p>Mariquita, suddenly, after five years, promised the chance of hearing
+Mass and going to Holy Communion, was not surprised that Sarella should
+only think of it as an outing; she was not a Catholic. But she thought
+it as well to give Sarella a hint.</p>
+
+<p>"I expect," she said, "father will be hoping that you would come to Mass
+with us."</p>
+
+<p>"I? Do you think that? He knows I am not a Catholic&mdash;why should he
+care?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he would care. I am sure of that."</p>
+
+<p>Sarella laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"You sly puss! I believe you want to convert me," she said, shaking her
+head jocularly at Mariquita.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I should be glad if you were a Catholic. Any Catholic
+would."</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay <i>you</i> would. But your father never troubles himself about
+such things&mdash;he leaves them to the women. He wouldn't care."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he would. You must not judge my father&mdash;he thinks without
+speaking; he is a very silent person."</p>
+
+<p>Sarella laughed again.</p>
+
+<p>"Not so silent as you imagine," she said slyly; "he talks to me, my
+dear."</p>
+
+<p>"Very likely. I daresay you are easier to talk to than I am. For I too
+am silent&mdash;I have not seen towns and things like you."</p>
+
+<p>"It does make a difference," Sarella admitted complacently. Then, with
+more covert interest than she showed: "If you really think he would like
+me to go with you to Mass, I should be glad to please him. After all,
+one should encourage him in this desire to resume his religious duties.
+Perhaps he would take us again."</p>
+
+<p>"I am quite sure he would like you to hear Mass with us," Mariquita
+repeated slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I will do so. You had better tell me about it&mdash;one would not like
+to do the wrong thing."</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps Mariquita told her more about it than Sarella had intended.</p>
+
+<p>"She is tremendously in earnest, anyway," Sarella decided; "she can talk
+on <i>that</i> eagerly enough. I must say," she thought, good-naturedly, "I
+<i>am</i> glad <i>her</i> father's giving her the chance of doing it. I had no
+idea she felt about it like that. She is good&mdash;to care so much and never
+say a word of what it is to her not to have it. I never thought there
+was an ounce of religion about the place. She evidently thinks her
+father cares, too. I should want some persuading of <i>that</i>. But she may
+be right in saying he expects me to go to his church. She is very
+positive. And some men are like that&mdash;their women must do what they do.
+They leave church alone for twenty years, but when they begin to go to
+church their women must go at once. And the Don is masterful enough.
+Perhaps he thinks it's time he began to remember his soul. If so, he is
+sure to begin by bothering about other people's souls. She thinks a lot
+more of him than he thinks of her. In his way, though, he is just as
+Spanish as she is; I suppose that's why I'm to go to Mass."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Don Joaquin had sounded Mariquita with reference to Sarella's religion.
+It suited him to sound Sarella in reference to Mariquita&mdash;and another
+person. This he would not have done had he not regarded Sarella as
+potentially a near relation.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Gore talks about interesting things?" he observed tentatively.</p>
+
+<p>"What people call 'interesting things' are sometimes very tedious," she
+answered smartly, intending to please him.</p>
+
+<p>He <i>was</i> a little pleased, but not diverted from his purpose. He never
+was diverted from his purposes.</p>
+
+<p>"He is a different sort of person from any Mariquita has known," he
+remarked; "conversation like his must interest her."</p>
+
+<p>"Only, she does not converse with him."</p>
+
+<p>"But she hears."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Mariquita <i>hears</i> everything."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't think she finds him tedious?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no! She does not know anyone is tedious." It by no means struck her
+father that this was a fault in her.</p>
+
+<p>"It is better to be content with one's company," he said. Then, "He does
+not find <i>her</i> tedious, I think, though she speaks little."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Gore? Anything but!" And Sarella laughed.</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin waited for more, and got it.</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody could interest him more," she declared with conviction, shaking
+her head with pregnant meaning.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! So I have thought sometimes," Don Joaquin agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Anyone</i> could see it. Except Mariquita," she proceeded.</p>
+
+<p>"Mariquita not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not she! Mariquita's eyes look so high she cannot see you and me, nor
+Mr. Gore."</p>
+
+<p>After "you and me" Sarella had made an infinitesimal pause, and had
+darted an instantaneous glance at Don Joaquin. He had scarcely time to
+catch the glance before it was averted and Sarella added, "or Mr.
+Gore."</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin did not think it objectionable in his daughter "not to see"
+"you and me"&mdash;himself and Sarella&mdash;too hastily. But it would ultimately
+be advisable that she should see what was coming before it actually
+came. That would save telling. Neither would he have been pleased if she
+had quickly scented a lover in Mr. Gore; that would have offended her
+father's sense of dignity. Nor would it have been advisable for her to
+suspect a lover in Mr. Gore at any time, if Mr. Gore were not intending
+to be one. Once he was really desirous of being one, and her father
+approved, she might as well awake to it.</p>
+
+<p>"It is true," he said, "Mariquita has not those ideas."</p>
+
+<p>There was undoubtedly a calm communication in his tone. Sarella could
+not decide whether it implied censure of "those ideas" elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>"Not seeing what can be seen," she suggested with some pique, "may
+deceive others. Thus false hopes are given."</p>
+
+<p>"Mariquita has given no hopes to anyone," her father declared sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not. Yet Mr. Gore may think that what is visible must be
+seen&mdash;like his 'interest' in her; and that, since it is seen and not
+disapproved...."</p>
+
+<p>"Only, as you said, Mariquita <i>doesn't</i> see."</p>
+
+<p>"He may not understand that. He may see nothing objectionable in
+himself...."</p>
+
+<p>"There is nothing objectionable. The contrary."</p>
+
+<p>And Sarella knew from his tone that Don Joaquin did not disapprove of
+Mr. Gore as a possible son-in-law.</p>
+
+<p>"How hard it is," she thought, "to get these Spaniards to say anything
+out. Why can't they say what they mean?"</p>
+
+<p>Sarella was not deficient in a sort of superficial good-nature. It
+seemed to her that she would have to "help things along." She thought it
+out of the question for Mariquita to go on indefinitely at the range,
+doing the work of three women for no reward, and rapidly losing her
+youth, letting her life be simply wasted. There had never been anyone
+before Mr. Gore, and never would be anyone else; it would be a
+providential way out of the present impossible state of things if he and
+Mariquita should make a match of it. And why shouldn't they? She did not
+believe that he was actually in love with Mariquita yet; perhaps he
+never would be till he discovered in her some sort of response. And
+Mariquita if left to herself was capable of going on for ten years just
+as she was.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Gore," she told Don Joaquin, "is not the sort of man to throw
+himself at a girl's head if he imagined it would be unpleasant to her."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should he be unpleasant to her?"</p>
+
+<p>"No reason at all. And he isn't unpleasant to her. Only she never thinks
+of&mdash;that sort of thing."</p>
+
+<p>Her father did not want her to "think of that sort of thing"&mdash;till
+called upon. Sarella saw that, and thought him as stupid as his
+daughter.</p>
+
+<p>His idea of what would be correct was that Gore should "speak to him,"
+that he should (after due examination of his conditions) signify
+approval, first to Gore himself, and then to Mariquita, whereupon it
+would be her duty to listen encouragingly to Mr. Gore's proposals. Don
+Joaquin made Sarella understand that these were his notions.</p>
+
+<p>("How Spanish!" she thought.)</p>
+
+<p>"You'll never get it done that way," she told him shortly. "Mr. Gore
+will not say a word to you till he thinks Mariquita would not be
+offended&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Why should she be offended!"</p>
+
+<p>"She would be, if Mr. Gore came to you, till she had given him some
+cause for believing she cared at all for him. He knows that well enough.
+You may be sure that while she seems unaware of his taking an interest
+in her, he will never give you the least hint. He doesn't <i>want</i> to
+marry her&mdash;yet. He won't let himself want it before she gives <i>some</i>
+sign."</p>
+
+<p>Sarella understood her own meaning quite well, but Don Joaquin did not
+understand it so clearly.</p>
+
+<p>He took an early opportunity of saying to his daughter:</p>
+
+<p>"I think Mr. Gore a nice man. He is correct. I approve of him. And it is
+an advantage that he is a Catholic."</p>
+
+<p>To call it "an advantage" seemed to Mariquita a dry way of putting it,
+but then her father <i>was</i> dry.</p>
+
+<p>"Living in the house," he continued, wishing she would say something,
+"he must be intimate with us. I find him suitable for that. One would
+not care for it in every case. Had he turned out a different sort of
+person, I should not have wished for any friendship between him and
+yourselves&mdash;Sarella and you. It might have been out of place."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not think there would ever be much friendship between Sarella and
+him," said Mariquita; "she hardly listens when he talks about things&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But <i>you</i> should listen. It would be not courteous to make him think
+you found his conversation tedious."</p>
+
+<p>"Tedious! I listen with interest."</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt. And there is nothing out of place in your showing it. He is
+no longer a stranger to us."</p>
+
+<p>"He is kind," she said. "He worked hard to help Jack in getting his shed
+fit for Ginger. It was he who built the partitions. Jack told me. Mr.
+Gore said nothing about it. Also, he was good to Ben Sturt when he hurt
+his knee and could not ride; he went and sat with him, chatting, and
+read funny books to him. He is a very kind person. I am glad you like
+him&mdash;I was not sure."</p>
+
+<p>"I waited. One wishes to know a stranger before liking him, as you call
+it; what is more important, I approve of him, and find him correct."</p>
+
+<p>Whether this helped much we cannot say. Sarella didn't think so, though
+Don Joaquin reported it to her with much complacence.</p>
+
+<p>"She must know now," he said, "that I <i>authorize</i> him."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Jack sounded Mr. Gore's praises loudly in Mariquita's ears, and she
+heard them gladly. She thought well of her fellow-creatures, and it was
+always pleasant to her to hear them commended.</p>
+
+<p>Jack also bragged a little of his diplomacy, bidding his daughter note
+how Miss Mariquita had been pleased by his praise of her sweetheart.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Mariquita has not got even a sweetheart," Ginger declared, "and
+maybe never will. It isn't the way of her. She was just as proud when
+you said a good word for Ben Sturt."</p>
+
+<p>"Ben Sturt! What's <i>he</i> to the young mistress?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just nothing at all&mdash;not in that way. Nor yet Mr. Gore isn't. And the
+more's the pity. But she's good-hearted. She likes to hear good of
+folk&mdash;as much as some likes to hear ill of anybody, no matter who."</p>
+
+<p>Jack was a little discouraged&mdash;but not effectually.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gore was much too slow, he thought. Why should Miss Mariquita be
+thinking of him unless he "let on" how much he was thinking of her?</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ever lie under an apple-tree when the blossom was on it?" he
+asked Gore one day.</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay I have."</p>
+
+<p>"And expected to have your mouth full of apples when there was only
+blossom on it?"</p>
+
+<p>Jack forced so much meaning into his ugly old face that Gore could
+discern the allegorical intent. He was very amused.</p>
+
+<p>"There'd never be much <i>chance</i> of apples," he said carelessly, "if the
+tree was shaken till the blossom fell off. The wind spoils more blossom
+than the frost does."</p>
+
+<p>Jack was not the only one who thought Gore slow in his wooing; the
+cowboys thought so too, though they did not, like Jack, find any fault
+with him for his slowness. In general they would have been more critical
+of rapidity and apparent success. Ben Sturt had learned to like him
+cordially, and wished him success, but Ben was of opinion that more
+haste would have been worse speed. He thought that Gore deserved
+Mariquita if anyone could, but was sure that even Gore would have to
+wait long and be very patient and careful. To Ben Mariquita seemed
+almost like one belonging to another world, certainly living on a plane
+above his comprehension, where ordinary love-making would be, somehow,
+unfitting and hopeless. It had always met with her father's cool
+approbation that Mariquita kept herself aloof from the young men about
+the place. But she was not wanting in interest for them. They were her
+neighbors, and she, who had so much interest for all her little dumb
+neighbors of the prairie, had a much higher interest in these bigger,
+but not much less dumb, neighbors of the homestead. They were more than
+a mere group to her. Each individual in the group was, she knew, as dear
+to God as herself, had been created by God for the same purpose as
+herself, and for the soul of each, Christ upon the Cross had been in as
+bitter labor as for the soul of any one of the saints. She was the last
+creature on earth to regard as of mere casual interest to herself those
+in whom God's interest was so deep, and close, and unfailing.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps they were rough; it might be that of the great things of which
+Mariquita herself thought so habitually, they thought little and seldom:
+but she did not think them bad. She thought more of them than they
+guessed, and liked them better than they imagined. She would have wished
+to serve and help them, and was not indolent, but humble concerning
+herself, and shy. She worked for them, more perhaps than her father
+thought necessary; in that way she could serve them. But she could not
+preach to them, nor exhort them. She would have shrunk instinctively,
+not from the danger of ridicule, but from the danger that the ridicule
+might fall on religion itself, and not merely on her. She would have
+dreaded the risk of misrepresenting religion to them, of giving them
+ideas of God such as would repel them from Him. She knew that speech was
+not easy to her, eloquent speech was no gift of hers; she did not
+believe herself to have any readiness of expressing what she felt and
+knew, and did not credit herself with great knowledge. She did not
+really put them down as being entirely ignorant of what she did know.</p>
+
+<p>The idea of a woman's preaching would have shocked Mariquita, to her it
+would have seemed "out of place." She was a humble girl, with a
+diffidence not universal among those who are themselves trying to serve
+God, some of whom are apt to be slow at understanding that others may be
+as near Him as themselves, though behaving differently, and holding a
+different fashion of speech.</p>
+
+<p>God who had made them must know more about them, she felt, than she
+could. She did not think she understood them very well, but God had made
+the men and knew them as well as He knew the women. She was, with all
+her ignorance and her limited opportunities of observation and
+understanding, able to see much goodness among these neighbors of hers;
+He must be able to see much more.</p>
+
+<p>In reality Mariquita did more for them than she had any idea of. They
+understood that in her was something higher than their understanding;
+that her goodness was real they did understand. It never shocked them as
+the "goodness" of some good people would by a first instinct have
+shocked them, by its uncharity, its self-conscious superiority, its
+selfishness, its complacence, its eagerness to assume the Divine
+prerogative of judgment and of punishment. They were, perhaps
+unconsciously, proud of her, who was so plainly never proud of herself.
+They knew that she was kind. They had penetration enough to be aware
+that if she held her own way, in some external aloofness, it was not out
+of cold indifference, or self-centred pride, not even out of a prudish
+shrinking from their roughness. They became less rough. Their behavior
+in her sight and hearing was not without effect upon their behavior in
+her absence. She taught them a reverence for woman that may only have
+begun in respect for herself. Almost all of them cared enough for her
+approval to try and become more capable of deserving it. Some of them,
+God who taught them knows how, became conscious of her lonely absorption
+in prayer, and the prairie became less empty to them. Probably none of
+them remained ignorant that to the girl God was life and breath,
+happiness and health, master and companion: the explanation of herself
+and of her beauty. They did not understand it all, but they saw more
+than they understood.</p>
+
+<p>The loveliness of each flower preached to Mariquita; sometimes she would
+sit upon the ground, her heart beating, holding in her hand one of those
+tiny weeds that millions of eyes can overlook without perceiving they
+are beautiful, insignificant in size, without any blaze of color, and
+realize its marvel of loveliness with a singular exultation; she would
+note the exquisite perfection of its minute parts&mdash;that each tiny spray
+was a string of stars, white, or tenderest azure, or mauve,
+gold-centred, a microscopic installation hidden all its life on the
+prairie-floor, as if falling from heaven it had grown smaller and
+smaller as it neared the earth. Her heart beat, I say, as she looked,
+and the light shining in her happy eyes was exultation at the
+unimaginable loveliness of God, who had imagined this minutest creature,
+and thought it worth while to conceive this and every other lovely thing
+for the house even of His children's exile and probation, their
+waiting-room on the upward road. So it preached to her the Uncreated
+Beauty, and the unbeginning, Eternal Love. As unconscious as was the
+little flower of its fragrance, its loveliness and its message,
+Mariquita, who could never have preached, was giving her message too.</p>
+
+<p>Her rough neighbors saw her near them and (perhaps without knowing that
+they knew it) knew that that which made her rare and exquisite was of
+Divine origin. She never hinted covert exhortation in her talk. If she
+spoke to any of them they could listen without dread of some shrewdly
+folded rebuke. Yet they could not get away from the fact that she was
+herself a perpetual reminder of noble purpose.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>What the cowboys had come, with varying degrees of slowness or celerity,
+to feel by intuitions little instructed by experience or reasoning, Gore
+had to arrive at by more deliberate study.</p>
+
+<p>He was more civilized and less instinctive. He knew many more people,
+and had experience, wanting to them, of many women of fine and high
+character. What made the rarity of Mariquita's instinct did not inform
+him, and he had to observe and surmise.</p>
+
+<p>He saw no books in the house, and did not perceive how Mariquita could
+read; she must, in the way of information and knowledge such as most
+educated girls possess be, as it were, disinherited. Yet he did not feel
+that she was ignorant. It is more ignorant to have adopted false
+knowledge than to be uninformed.</p>
+
+<p>Every day added to Gore's sense of the girl's rarity and nobility. He
+admired her more and more, the reverence of his admiration increasing
+with its growth. Nor was his appreciation blind, or blinded. He surmised
+a certain lack in her&mdash;the absence of humor, and he was, at any rate, so
+far correct that Mariquita was without the habit of humor. Long after
+this time, she was thought by her companions to have a delightful
+radiant cheerfulness like mirth. But when Gore first knew her, what
+occasion had she had for indulgence in the habit of humor?</p>
+
+<p>Her father's house was not gay, and he would have thought gaiety in it
+out of place. Loud laughter might resound in the cowboys' quarters, but
+Don Joaquin would have much disapproved any curiosity in his daughter as
+to its cause. He seldom laughed himself and never wished to make anyone
+else laugh. His Spanish blood and his Indian blood almost equally tended
+to make him regard laughter and merriment as a slur on dignity.</p>
+
+<p>Some of those who have attempted the elusive feat of analyzing the
+causes and origin of humor lay down that it lies in a perception of the
+incongruous, the less fit. I should be sorry to think that a complete
+account of the matter. No doubt it describes the occasion of much of our
+laughter, though not, I refuse to believe, of all.</p>
+
+<p>That sense of humor implies little charity, and a good deal of conscious
+superiority. It makes us laugh at accidents not agreeable to those who
+suffer them, at uncouthness, ignorances, solecisms, inferiorities,
+follies, blunders, stupidities, unconsciously displayed weaknesses and
+faults. It is the sort of humor that sets us laughing at a smartly
+dressed person fallen into a filthy drain, at a man who does not know
+how to eat decently, at mispronunciation of names, and misapplication or
+oblivion of aspirates, at greediness not veiled by politeness, at a man
+singing who doesn't know how. Now Mariquita had no conceit and was
+steeped in charity in big and little things. In that sort of humor she
+would have been lacking, for she would have thought too kindly of its
+butt to be able to enjoy his misfortune. And, as has been already said,
+she had no habit of the thing.</p>
+
+<p>Gore, in accusing her of lack of humor, felt that the accusation was a
+heavy one. It was not quite unjust: we have partly explained Mariquita's
+deficiency without entirely denying it, or pretending it was an
+attraction. No doubt, she would have been a greater laugher if she had
+been more ill-natured, had had wider opportunities of perceiving the
+absurdity of her contemporaries.</p>
+
+<p>As for those queer and quaint quips of circumstance that make the oddity
+of daily life for some of us, few of them had enlivened Mariquita. The
+chief occasion of general gathering was round the table, where hunger
+and haste were the most obvious characteristics of the meeting. Till
+Gore came, there had been little conversation. It was not Mariquita's
+fault that she had been used neither to see or hear much that was
+entertaining. Perhaps the facility of being amused is an acquired taste;
+and even so, the faculty of humor is almost of necessity dormant where
+scarcely anything offers for it to work or feed upon.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The projected visit to Maxwell did not immediately take place. Don
+Joaquin was seldom hasty in action, having a chronic, habitual esteem
+for deliberation and deliberateness too.</p>
+
+<p>Sarella would have been impatient had she not been sufficiently unwell
+to shrink for the moment from the idea of a very long ride. For the mere
+pleasure of riding she would never have mounted a horse; she would only
+ride when there was no other means of arriving at some object or place
+not otherwise attainable.</p>
+
+<p>Gore, however, was again absent on the second Saturday after his first
+visit to Maxwell. And on this occasion his place was vacant at
+breakfast. Nor did he return till Monday afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>On that afternoon Mariquita had walked out some distance across the
+prairie. Not in the direction of the Maxwell trail, but quite in the
+opposite direction. Her way brought her to what they called Saul
+Bluff&mdash;a very low, broken ridge, sparsely overgrown with small rather
+shabby trees. It would scarcely have hidden the chimneys of a cottage
+had there been any cottage on its farther side; but there was none
+anywhere near it. For many miles there was no building in any direction,
+except "Don Jo's," as, to its owner's annoyance, his homestead was
+called.</p>
+
+<p>When Mariquita had reached the top of the bluff she took advantage of
+the slight elevation on which she stood, to look round upon the great
+spread of country stretching to the low horizon on every side. It was,
+like most days here, a day of wind and sun. The air was utterly pure and
+scentless; the scent was not fir-scent, and the scattered, windy trees
+gave no smell. She saw a chipmunk and laughed, as the sight of that
+queer little creature, and its odd mixture of shyness and effrontery
+always made her laugh.</p>
+
+<p>It was even singularly clear, and the foothills of the Rockies were just
+visible. The trail, which ran over the bluff a little to her left, was
+full in sight below her, but so little used as to be slight enough. A
+mile farther on it crossed the river, and was too faint to be seen
+beyond. The river was five miles behind her as well as a mile in front,
+for it made a big loop, north, and then, west-about, southward.</p>
+
+<p>She sat down and for a long time was rapt in her own thoughts, which
+were not, at first, of any human person. Perhaps she would not herself
+have said that she was praying. But all prayer does not consist in
+begging favors even for others. Its essence does not lie in request, but
+in the lifting of self, heart and mind, to God. The love of a child to
+its father need not necessarily find its sole exercise and expression in
+demand. Her thought and love flew up to her Father and rested,
+immeasurably happy. The real joys of her life were in that presence. The
+sense of His love, not merely for herself, was the higher bliss it gave
+her: not merely for herself, I say, for it spread as wide as all
+humanity, and her own share in it was as little as a star in the milky
+way, in the whole glory, what it is for all the saints in heaven and on
+earth, for all sinners, for His great Mother, and, most immeasurable of
+all, the infinite perfection of His love for Himself, of Father and Son
+for the Holy Spirit, of Son and Spirit for the Eternal Father, of Spirit
+and Father for the Son. This stretched far beyond the reach of her
+vision, but she looked as far as her human sight could reach, as one
+looks on that much of the mystic ocean that eye can hold. Not separable
+from this joy in the Divine Love was her joy in the Divine Beauty, of
+which all created beauty sang, whether it were that of the smallest
+flower or that of Christ's Mother herself. The wind's clean breath
+whispered of it; the vast loveliness of the enormous dome above her, and
+the limitless expanse of not less lovely earth on which that dome
+rested, witnessed to the Infinite Beauty that had imagined and made
+them.</p>
+
+<p>But sooner or later Mariquita must <i>share</i>, for in that the silent
+tenderness of her nature showed itself: she could not be content to have
+her great happiness to herself, to enjoy alone. So, presently, in her
+prayer she came, as always, to gathering round her all whom she knew
+and all whom she did not know. As she would have wished <i>them</i> to think
+in their prayer of her, so must she have them also in the Divine
+Presence with her, lift their names up to God, even their names which,
+unknown to her, He knew as well as He knew her own.</p>
+
+<p>Her living father and her dead mother, the old school-friends and the
+nuns, the old priest at Loretto, and a certain crooked old gardener that
+had been there (crooked in body, in face, and in temper), Sarella, and
+Mr. Gore, and all the cowboys&mdash;all these Mariquita gathered into the
+loving arms of her memory, and presented them at their Father's feet.
+Her way in this was her own way, and unlike perhaps that of others. She
+had no idea of bringing them to God's memory, as if His tenderness
+needed any reminder from her, for always she heard Him saying: "Can you
+teach Me pity and love?" She did not think it depended on her that good
+should come to them from Him. Were she to be lazy or forgetful, He would
+never let them suffer through her neglect. They were immeasurably more
+His than they could be hers. But she could not be at His feet and not in
+her loving mind see them there beside her, and she knew He chose that at
+His feet she should not forget them. She could not dictate to Him what
+He was to give them, in what fashion He should bless and help them. He
+knew exactly. Her surmises must be ignorant.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore Mariquita's prayer was more wordless than common, less
+phrased; but its intensity was more uncommon. Nor could it be limited to
+those&mdash;a handful out of all His children&mdash;whom she knew or had ever
+known. There were all the rest&mdash;everywhere: those who knew how to serve
+Him, and were doing it, as she had never learned to serve; those who had
+never heard His name, and those who knew it but shrank from it as that
+of an angry observer; those most hapless ones who lived by disobeying
+Him, even by dragging others down into the slough of disobedience; the
+whole world's sick, body-sick and soul-sick; those who here are mad, and
+will find reason only in heaven; the whole world's sorrowful ones, the
+luckless, those gripped in the hard clutch of penury, or the sordid
+clutch of debt; the blind whose first experience of beauty will be
+perfect beauty, the foully diseased, the deformed, the deaf and dumb
+whose first speech will be their joining in the songs of heaven, their
+first hearing that of the music of heaven ... all these, and many, many
+others she must bring about her, or her gladness in God's nearness would
+be selfishness. That nearness! she felt Him much nearer than was her own
+raiment, nearer than was her own flesh....</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XVII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was long after Mariquita had come to her place upon the bluff, that
+the sound of a horse cantering towards it made her rise and go to the
+farther westward edge of the bluff to look. The horseman was quite near,
+below her. It was Gore, and he saw her at the same moment in which she
+saw him. He lifted his big, wide-brimmed hat from his head and waved it.
+It would never have even occurred to her to be guilty of the
+churlishness of turning away to go homeward. Her thoughts, almost the
+only thing of her own she had ever had, she was always ready to lay
+aside for courtesy.</p>
+
+<p>He had dismounted, and was leading his horse up the rather steep slope.
+She stood waiting for him, a light rather than a smile upon her noble
+face, a light like the glow of a far horizon....</p>
+
+<p>"I thought," she said, when he had come up, "that you had gone to
+Maxwell."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I went to Denver this time," he told her, "beyond Denver a little.
+Where do you think I heard Mass yesterday&mdash;this morning again, too? for
+both of us, since you could not come."</p>
+
+<p>"Not at Loretto!"</p>
+
+<p>But she knew it was at Loretto. His smile told her.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, at Loretto. It was the same to me which place I went to. No, not
+the same, for I wanted to see the place where you had been a little
+girl, so that I could come back and bring you word of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, how kind you are!" she said, with a sort of wonder of gratefulness
+shining on her.</p>
+
+<p>("She is far more beautiful than I ever knew," he thought.)</p>
+
+<p>"Not kind at all," Gore protested. "Just to please myself! There's no
+great kindness in that except to myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes! for you knew how it would please me. It was wonderful that you
+should be so kind as to think of it."</p>
+
+<p>"It gave <i>me</i> pleasure anyway. To be in the place where you had been so
+happy&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, but I am always happy," she interrupted. "Though indeed I was happy
+there, and sorrowful to leave it. But I did not leave it quite behind;
+it came with me."</p>
+
+<p>"I have a great many things to tell you. They remember you <i>most</i>
+faithfully. If my going gave <i>me</i> pleasure, it gave them much more. You
+cannot think how much they made of me for your sake; I stayed there a
+long time after Mass yesterday, and they made me go back in the
+afternoon&mdash;I was there all afternoon. And all the time we were talking
+of you."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I think," Mariquita declared, laughing merrily, "your talk will
+have been monotonous."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, not monotonous at all. Are they not dear women? They showed me
+where you sat in chapel&mdash;and the different places where you had sat in
+classrooms, and in the refectory, when you first came, as a small girl
+of ten, and as you rose in the school."</p>
+
+<p>"I did not rise very high. I was never one of the clever ones&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"They kept that to themselves&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes! They would do that. Nuns are so charitable&mdash;they would never
+say that any of the girls was stupid."</p>
+
+<p>"No, they didn't hint that in the least. Sister Gabriel showed me a
+drawing of yours."</p>
+
+<p>"What was it?"</p>
+
+<p>"She said it was the Grand Canal at Venice. I have never been there&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Nor I. But I remember doing it. The water wouldn't come flat. It looked
+like a blue road running up-hill. Sister Gabriel was very kind, very
+kind indeed. She used to have hay-fever."</p>
+
+<p>"So she has now. She listened for more than half-an-hour while I told
+her about you."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Gore, I think you will have been inventing things to tell her,"
+Mariquita protested, laughing again. She kept laughing, for happiness
+and pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no! On the contrary, I kept forgetting things. Afterwards I
+remembered some of them, and told her what I had left out. Some I only
+remembered when it was too late, after I had come away. Sister Marie
+Madeleine&mdash;I hope you remember her too&mdash;she asked hundreds of questions
+about you."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, of course I remember her. She taught me French. And I was
+stupid about it...."</p>
+
+<p>"She was very anxious to know if you kept it up. She said you wanted
+only practice&mdash;and vocabulary."</p>
+
+<p>"And idiom, and grammar, and pronunciation," Mariquita insisted,
+laughing very cheerfully. "Did you tell her there was no one to keep it
+up with?"</p>
+
+<p>He told her of many others of the nuns&mdash;he had evidently taken trouble
+to bring her word of them all. And he had asked for news of the girls
+she had known best, and brought her news of them also. Several were
+married, two had entered Holy Religion.</p>
+
+<p>"Sylvia Markham," he said, "you remember her? She has come back to
+Loretto to be a nun. She is a novice; she was clothed at Easter. Sister
+Mary Scholastica she is&mdash;the younger children call her Sister Elastic."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," cried Mariquita, with her happy laugh, "how funny it is&mdash;to hear
+you talking of Sylvia. She was harum-scarum. What a noise she used to
+make, too! How pretty she was!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sister Elastic is just as pretty. She sent fifty messages to you. But
+Nellie Hurst&mdash;you remember her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly I do. She was champion at baseball. And she acted better than
+anybody. Oh, and she edited the Magazine, and she kept us all laughing.
+She <i>was</i> funny! Geraldine Barnes had a quinsy and it nearly choked her,
+but Nellie Hurst made her laugh so much that it burst, and she was soon
+well again...."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, and where do you think she is now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Where?" Mariquita asked almost breathlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"In California. At Santa Clara, near San José. She is a Carmelite."</p>
+
+<p>"A Carmelite! And she used to say she would write plays (She did write
+several that were acted at Loretto) and act them herself&mdash;on the stage,
+I mean."</p>
+
+<p>It took Gore a long time to tell all his budget of news; he had hardly
+finished before they reached the homestead, towards which the sinking
+sun had long warned them to be moving. And he had presents for her, a
+rosary ("brought by Mother General from Rome and blessed by the Pope,")
+a prayerbook, a lovely Agnus Dei covered with white satin and
+beautifully embroidered, scapulars, a little bottle of Lourdes water,
+another of ordinary holy water, and a little hanging stoup to put some
+of it in, also a statue of Our Lady, and a small framed print of the
+Holy House of Loretto.</p>
+
+<p>Mariquita had never owned so many things in her life.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dear!" she said. "And I had been long thinking that I was quite
+forgotten there; I am ashamed. And you&mdash;how to thank you!"</p>
+
+<p>"But you have been thanking me all the time," he said, "ever since I
+told you where I had been. Every time you laughed you thanked me."</p>
+
+<p>They met Ben Sturt, who was lounging about by the gate in the homestead
+fence; he had never seen Mariquita with just that light of happiness
+upon her.</p>
+
+<p>"Here," he said to Gore, "let me take the horse; I'll see to him."</p>
+
+<p>He knew that Mariquita would not come to the stables, and he wanted Gore
+to be free to stay with her to the last moment.</p>
+
+<p>As he led the horse away he thought to himself: "It has really begun at
+last;" and he loyally wished his friend good luck.</p>
+
+<p>Within a yard or two of the door they met Don Joaquin.</p>
+
+<p>"Father," she said at once, "Mr. Gore didn't go to Maxwell this time. He
+went all the way to Denver&mdash;to Loretto. And see what a lot of presents
+he has brought me from them!"</p>
+
+<p>Gore thought she looked adorable as, like a child unused to gifts, she
+showed her little treasures to the rather grim old prairie dog.</p>
+
+<p>He looked less grim than usual. It suited him that she should be so
+pleased.</p>
+
+<p>"Well!" he said, "you're stocked now. Mr. Gore had a long ride to fetch
+them."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes! Did you ever hear of anybody being so kind?"</p>
+
+<p>Her father noted shrewdly the new expression of grateful pleasure on her
+face. It seemed to him that Gore was not so incompetent as he had been
+supposing, to carry on his campaign. Sarella came out and joined them.
+"What a cunning little pin-cushion!" she exclaimed. "Isn't it just
+sweet?" The Agnus Dei was almost the only one of Mariquita's new
+treasures to which she could assign a use.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, and the necklace! Garnets relieved by those crystal blobs are just
+the very fashion."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a rosary," Don Joaquin explained in a rather stately tone. It
+made him uneasy&mdash;it must be unlucky&mdash;to hear these frivolous eulogies
+applied to "holy objects" with which personally he had never had the
+familiarity that diminishes awe.</p>
+
+<p>Mariquita had plenty to do indoors and did not linger. Gore went in also
+to wash and tidy himself after his immensely long ride.</p>
+
+<p>Sarella, who of course knew long before this where Mariquita had
+received her education, and had been told whence these pious gifts came,
+smiled as she turned to Don Joaquin.</p>
+
+<p>"So Gore rode all the way to Denver this time," she remarked.</p>
+
+<p>"It is beyond Denver. Mariquita was pleased to hear news of her old
+friends."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I daresay. Gore is not such a fool as he looks."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not thinking that he looks a fool at all," said Don Joaquin, more
+stately than ever.</p>
+
+<p>("How Spanish!" thought Sarella, "I suppose they're <i>born</i> solemn.")</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed," she cheerfully agreed, "nor do I. He wouldn't be so handsome
+if he looked silly. He's all sense. And he knows his road, short cuts
+and all."</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin disliked her mention of Gore's good looks, as she intended.
+She had no idea of being snubbed by her elderly suitor.</p>
+
+<p>"Mariquita," he laid down, "will think more of his good sense than of
+his appearance. I have not brought her up to consider a gentleman's
+looks."</p>
+
+<p>Sarella laughed; she was not an easy person to "down."</p>
+
+<p>"But you didn't bring <i>me</i> up," she said, "and I can tell you that you
+might have been as wise as Solomon and it wouldn't have mattered to me
+if you had been ugly. I'd rather look than listen any day; and I like to
+have something worth looking at."</p>
+
+<p>Her very pretty eyes were turned full on her mature admirer's face, and
+he did not dislike their flattery. An elderly man who has been very
+handsome is not often displeased at being told he is worth looking at
+still.</p>
+
+<p>"So do I, Sarellita," he responded, telling himself (and her) how much
+pleasure there was in looking at <i>her</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Stately he could not help being, but his manner had now no stiffness;
+and in the double diminutive of her name there was almost a tenderness,
+a nearer approach to tenderness than she could understand. She could
+understand, however, that he was more lover-like than he had ever been.</p>
+
+<p>A slight flush of satisfaction (that he took for maiden shyness) was on
+her face, as she looked up under her half-drooped eyelids.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps," he said in much lower tones than he usually employed,
+"perhaps Mr. Gore knows what you call his road better than I. But he
+does not know better the goal he wants to reach."</p>
+
+<p>("Say!" Sarella asked herself, "what's coming?")</p>
+
+<p>Two of the cowboys were coming&mdash;had come in fact. They appeared at that
+moment round the corner of the house, ready for supper.</p>
+
+<p>"So," one of them said, with rather loud irritation, evidently
+concluding a story, "my dad married her, and I have a step-ma younger
+than myself&mdash;"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Everyone on the range, from its owner down to old Jack, considered that
+Gore made much more way after his trip to Denver. Mariquita, it was
+decided, had, as it were, awakened to him. It was believed that she and
+he saw more of each other, and that she liked his company.</p>
+
+<p>Sarella thought things were going so well that they had much better be
+left to themselves, and this view she strongly impressed upon Don
+Joaquin. He had gradually come to hold a higher opinion of her sense; at
+first he had been attracted entirely by her beauty. Her aunt had not
+been remarkable for intelligence, and he had not thought the niece could
+be expected to be wiser than her departed elder.</p>
+
+<p>Sarella, on the other hand, did not think her admirer quite so sensible
+as he really was. That he was shrewd and successful in business, she
+knew, but was the less impressed that his methods had been slow and
+unhurried. To her eastern ideas there was nothing imposing (though
+extremely comfortable) in a moderate wealth accumulated by thirty years
+of patient work and stingy expenditure. But she was sure he did not in
+the least understand his own daughter, in whom she (who did not
+understand her any better than she would have understood Dante's <i>Divina
+Commedia</i>) saw nothing at all difficult to understand. The truth was
+that Don Joaquin had never understood any woman; without imagination, he
+could understand no sex but his own&mdash;and his experience of women was of
+the narrowest. Nevertheless, he was nearer to a sort of rough, nebulous
+perception of his daughter than was Sarella herself.</p>
+
+<p>His saying that Mariquita would not "consider" Gore's good looks, a
+remark that Sarella thought merely ridiculous, was an illustration of
+this. In his <i>explicit</i> mind, in his conscious attitude towards
+Mariquita, he assumed that it was <i>her</i> business and duty to respect
+<i>him</i>. He was her parent, so placed by God, and he had a great and
+sincere reverence for such Divine appointments as placed himself in a
+condition of superiority. (Insubordination or insolence in the cowboys
+would have gravely and honestly scandalized him). All the same, in an
+inner mind that he never consulted, and whose instruction he was far
+from seeking, he knew that his daughter was a higher creature than
+himself; all he <i>knew</i> that he knew was that a young girl was
+necessarily more innocent and pure than an elderly man could be (he
+himself was no profligate); that in fact all women were more religious
+than men, and that it behooved them to be so; nature made it easier for
+them.</p>
+
+<p>He had after deliberate consideration decided that it would be
+convenient and suitable that his daughter should marry Gore; the young
+man, he was sure, wished it, and, while the circumstances in which she
+was placed held little promise of a wide choice of husbands for her, he
+would, in Don Joaquin's opinion, make a quite suitable husband. To do
+him justice, he would never have manoeuvred to bring Gore into a
+marriage with Mariquita, had he appeared indifferent to the girl, or
+had he seemed in any way unfit.</p>
+
+<p>But, though Don Joaquin had reached the point of intending the marriage,
+he saw no occasion for much love-making, and none for Mariquita's
+falling in love with the young man's handsome face and fine figure. Her
+business was to learn that her father approved the young man as a
+suitor, and to recognize that that approval stamped him as suitable.
+That Mariquita would not <i>suddenly</i> learn this lesson, Sarella had
+partly convinced him; but he did not think there would now be any
+suddenness in the matter. He would have spoken with authoritative
+plainness to her now, without further delay; but there was a
+difficulty&mdash;Gore had not spoken to him.</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin thought it was about time he did so.</p>
+
+<p>"You think," he remarked when they were alone together over the fire,
+"that you shall buy Blaine's?"</p>
+
+<p>Now Gore would certainly not buy a range so near Don Joaquin's if he
+should fail to secure a mistress for it in Don Joaquin's daughter. And
+he was by no means inclined to take success with her for granted. He was
+beginning to hope that there was a chance of success&mdash;that was all.</p>
+
+<p>"It is worth the money," he answered; "and I have the money. But I have
+not absolutely decided to settle down to this way of life at all."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you had."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, no. It must depend on what does not depend upon myself."</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin found this enigmatical, which Gore might or might not have
+intended that he should. Though wholly uncertain how Mariquita might
+regard him when she came to understand that he wished for more than
+friendship, he was by this time quite aware that her father approved;
+and he was particularly anxious that she should not be "bothered."</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin diplomatically hinted that Blaine might close with some
+other offer.</p>
+
+<p>"There is no other offer. He told me so quite straightforwardly. I have
+the refusal. If he does get another offer, and I have not decided, he is
+of course quite free to accept it. He does not want to hurry me; I
+expect he knows that if I did buy, he would get a better price from me
+than from anyone else."</p>
+
+<p>Gore might very reasonably be tired after his immensely long ride, and
+when he went off to bed Don Joaquin could not feel aggrieved. But he was
+hardly pleased by the idea that the young man intended to manage his own
+affairs without discussion of them, and to keep his own counsel.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XIX.</h2>
+
+
+<p>"Just you leave well alone," said Sarella, a little more didactically
+than Don Joaquin cared for. "Things are going as well as can be
+expected" (and here she laughed a little); "they're moving now."</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin urged his opinion that Mariquita ought to be enlightened as
+to his approval of her suitor.</p>
+
+<p>Sarella answered, with plain impatience, "If you tell her she has a
+suitor she <i>won't</i> have one. Don't you pry her eyes open with your
+thumb; let them open of themselves."</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin only half understood this rhetoric, and he seldom liked what
+he could not understand.</p>
+
+<p>He adopted a slightly primitive measure in reprisal&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't," he remarked pregnantly, "as if the young man were not a
+Catholic&mdash;I would not allow her to marry him if he were not."</p>
+
+<p>"No?"</p>
+
+<p>And it was quite clear to Don Joaquin that he had killed two birds with
+one stone; he saw that Sarella was both interested and impressed.</p>
+
+<p>"Catholics should marry Catholics," he declared with decision.</p>
+
+<p>"You didn't think so always," Sarella observed, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"If I forgot it, I suffered for it," her elderly admirer retorted.</p>
+
+<p>Sarella was puzzled. She naturally had not the remotest suspicion that
+he had felt his wife's early death as a reprisal on the part of Heaven.
+She knew little of her aunt, and less of that aunt's married life. Had
+there been quarrels about religion?</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I daresay you may be right," she said gravely. "Two religions in
+one house may lead to awkwardness."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. That is so," he agreed, with a completeness of conviction that
+considerably enlightened her.</p>
+
+<p>"And after all," she went on, smiling with great sweetness, "they're
+only two branches of the same religion."</p>
+
+<p>This was her way of hinting that the little bird he had married would
+have been wise to hop from her own religious twig to his.</p>
+
+<p>This suggestion, however, Don Joaquin utterly repudiated.</p>
+
+<p>"The same religion!" he said, with an energy that almost made Sarella
+jump. "The Catholic Church and heresy all one religion! Black and white
+the same color!"</p>
+
+<p>Sarella was now convinced that he and his wife had fought on the
+subject. On such matters she was quite resolved there should be no
+fighting in her case; concerning expenditure it might be <i>necessary</i> to
+fight. But Sarella was an easy person who had no love for needless
+warfare, and she made up her mind at once.</p>
+
+<p>"I understand, now you put it that way," she said amiably, "you're right
+again. Both can't be right, and the husband is the head of the wife."</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin accepted <i>this</i> theory whole-heartedly, and nodded
+approvingly.</p>
+
+<p>"How," he said, "can a Protestant mother bring up her Catholic son?"</p>
+
+<p>Sarella laughed inwardly. So he had quite arranged the sex of his future
+family.</p>
+
+<p>"But," she said with a remarkably swift riposte, "if Catholics should
+not marry Protestants, they have no business to make love to them. Have
+they?"</p>
+
+<p>Her Catholic admirer looked a little silly, and she swore to herself
+that he was blushing.</p>
+
+<p>"Because," she continued, entirely without blushing, "a Catholic
+gentleman made love to <i>me</i> once&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps," suggested Don Joaquin, recovering himself "he hoped you would
+become a Catholic, if you accepted him."</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay," Sarella agreed very cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>"But you evidently did not accept him."</p>
+
+<p>"As to that," she explained frankly, "he did not go quite so far as
+asking me to marry him."</p>
+
+<p>"He drew back!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not exactly. He was interrupted."</p>
+
+<p>"But didn't he resume the subject?"</p>
+
+<p>Sarella laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd rather not answer that question," she answered; "you're asking
+quite a few questions, aren't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I want to ask another. Did you like that Catholic gentleman well enough
+to share all he had, his religion, his name, and his home?"</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin was not laughing, on the contrary, he was eagerly serious,
+and Sarella laughed no more.</p>
+
+<p>"He never did ask me to share them," she replied with a self-possession
+that her elderly lover admired greatly.</p>
+
+<p>"But he does. He is asking you. Sarella, will you share my religion, and
+my name, my home, and all that I have?"</p>
+
+<p>Even now she was amused inwardly, not all caused by love. She noted, and
+was entertained by noting, how he put first among things she was to
+share, his religion&mdash;because he was not so sure of her willingness to
+share that as of her readiness to share his name and his goods, and
+meant to be sure, as she now quite understood. It did not make her
+respect him less. She had the sense to know that he would not make a
+worse husband for caring enough for his religion to make a condition of
+it, and she was grateful for the form in which he put the condition. He
+spared her the brutality of, "I will marry you if you will turn Catholic
+to marry me, but I won't if you refuse to do that."</p>
+
+<p>She smiled again, but not lightly. "I think," she said, "you will need
+some one when Mariquita goes away to a home of her own. And I think I
+could make you comfortable and happy. I will try, anyway. And it would
+never make you happy and comfortable if we were of different religions.
+If my husband's is good enough for him, it must be good enough for me."</p>
+
+<p>Poor Sarella! She was quite homeless, and quite penniless. She had not
+come here with any idea of finding a husband in this elderly Spaniard,
+but she could think of him as a husband, with no repugnance and with
+some satisfaction. He was respectable and trustworthy; she believed him
+to be as fond of her as it was in his nature to be fond of anybody. He
+had prudence and good sense. And his admiration pleased her; her own
+sense told her that she would get in marrying him as much as she could
+expect.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall you tell Mariquita, or shall I?" she inquired before they parted.</p>
+
+<p>"I will tell her. I am her father," he replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Then, do not say anything about her moving off to a home of her own&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" he asked with some obstinacy. For in truth he had thought the
+opportunity would be a good one for "breaking ground."</p>
+
+<p>"Because she will think we want to get rid of her; or she will think <i>I</i>
+do. Tell her, instead, that I will do my best to make her happy and
+comfortable. If I were you, I should tell her you count on our marriage
+making it pleasanter for her here."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XX.</h2>
+
+
+<p>When her father informed her of his intended marriage, Mariquita was
+much more taken aback than he had foreseen. He had supposed she must
+have observed more or less what was coming.</p>
+
+<p>"Marry Sarella, father!" she exclaimed, too thoroughly astonished to
+weigh her words, "but you are her uncle!"</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin, who was pale enough ordinarily, reddened angrily.</p>
+
+<p>"I am no relation whatever to her," he protested fiercely. "How dare you
+accuse your father of wishing to marry his own niece? How dare you
+insult Sarella by supposing she would marry her uncle?"</p>
+
+<p>It was terrible to Mariquita to see her father so furious. He had never
+been soft or tender to her, but he had hardly ever shown any anger
+towards her, and now he looked at her as if he disliked her.</p>
+
+<p>It did astonish her that Sarella should be willing to marry her uncle.
+Sarella had indeed, as Don Joaquin had not, thought of the difficulty;
+but she saw that there appeared to be none to him; no doubt, he knew
+what was the marriage-law among Catholics, and perhaps that was why he
+was so insistent as to her being one.</p>
+
+<p>"I know," Mariquita said gently, "that there is no blood relationship
+between her and you. She is my first cousin, but she is only your niece
+by marriage. I do not even know what the Church lays down."</p>
+
+<p>Her father was still angry with her, but he was startled as well. He did
+not know any better than herself what the Church laid down. He did know
+that between him and Sarella there was no real relationship&mdash;in the law
+of nature there was nothing to bar their marriage, and he had acted in
+perfect good faith. But he did not intend to break the Church's law
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"If you are ignorant of the Church's law," he said severely, "you should
+not talk as if you knew it."</p>
+
+<p>She knew she had not so talked, but she made no attempt to excuse
+herself.</p>
+
+<p>"It is," she said quietly, "quite easy to find out. The priest at
+Maxwell would tell you immediately."</p>
+
+<p>She saw that her father, though still frowning heavily, was not entirely
+disregardful of her suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>"Father," she went on in a low gentle tone, "I beg your pardon if, being
+altogether surprised, I spoke suddenly, and seemed disrespectful."</p>
+
+<p>"You were very disrespectful," he said, with stiff resentment.</p>
+
+<p>Mariquita's large grave eyes were full of tears, but he did not notice
+them, and would have been unmoved if he had seen them. It was difficult
+for her to keep them from overflowing, and more difficult to go on with
+what she wished to say.</p>
+
+<p>"You know," she said, "that there are things which the Church does not
+allow except upon conditions, but does allow on conditions&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What things?"</p>
+
+<p>"For instance, marriage with a person who is not a Catholic&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin received a sudden illumination. Yes! With a dispensation
+that would have been dutiful which he had done undutifully without one.</p>
+
+<p>"You think a dispensation can be obtained in&mdash;in this case."</p>
+
+<p>"Father," she answered almost in a whisper, "I am quite ignorant about
+it."</p>
+
+<p>He had severely reprimanded her for speaking, being ignorant. Now he
+wanted encouragement and ordered her to speak.</p>
+
+<p>"But say what you think," he said dictatorially.</p>
+
+<p>"As there is no real relationship," she answered, courageously enough
+after her former snubbing, "if such a marriage is forbidden" (he scowled
+blackly, but she went on), "it cannot be so by the law of God, but by
+the law of the Church. She cannot give anyone permission to disregard
+God's law, but she can, I suppose, make exception to her own law. That
+is what we call a dispensation. God does not forbid the use of meat on
+certain days, but she does. If God forbade it she could never give
+leave for it; but she often gives leave&mdash;not only to a certain person,
+but to a whole diocese, or a whole country even, for temporary
+reasons&mdash;what we call a dispensation."</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin had listened carefully. He was much more ignorant of
+ecclesiastical matters than his daughter. He had never occupied himself
+with considering the reasons behind ecclesiastical regulations, and much
+that he heard now came like entirely new knowledge. But he was Spaniard
+enough to understand logic very readily, and he did understand
+Mariquita.</p>
+
+<p>"So," he queried eagerly, "you think that even if such a marriage is
+against regulation" (he would not say "forbidden"), "there might be a
+dispensation?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not see why there should not."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, there is no reason," he said loftily, adding with ungracious
+ingratitude, "and it was extremely out of place for you to look shocked
+when I told you of my purpose."</p>
+
+<p>Mariquita accepted this further reproof meekly. Don Joaquin was only
+asserting his dignity, that had lain a little in abeyance while he was
+listening to her explanations.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall have to be away all to-morrow," he said, "on business. I do not
+wish you to say anything to Sarella till I give you permission."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not."</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin was not addicted to telling fibs&mdash;except business ones; in
+selling a horse he regarded them as merely the floral ornaments of a
+bargain, which would have an almost indecent nakedness without them. But
+on this occasion he stooped to a moderate prevarication.</p>
+
+<p>"Sarella," he confidentially informed that lady, "I shall be up before
+sunrise and away the whole of to-morrow. Sometime the day after I shall
+have a good chance of telling Mariquita. Don't you hint anything to her
+meanwhile."</p>
+
+<p>"Not I," Sarella promised.</p>
+
+<p>("A hitch somewhere," she thought, feeling pretty sure that he had
+spoken to Mariquita already.)</p>
+
+<p>When Don Joaquin, after his return from Maxwell, spoke to Mariquita
+again, he once more condescended to some half-truthfulness&mdash;necessary,
+as he considered, to that great principle of diplomacy&mdash;the balance of
+power. A full and plain explanation of the exact position would, he
+thought, unduly exalt his daughter's wisdom and foresight at the expense
+of his own.</p>
+
+<p>"The priest," he informed her, "will, <i>of course</i>, be very pleased to
+marry Sarella and myself when we are ready. That will not be until she
+has been instructed and baptized. It will not be for a month or two."</p>
+
+<p>Mariquita offered her respectful congratulations both on Sarella's
+willingness to become a Catholic, and on the marriage itself. She was
+little given to asking questions, and was quite aware that her father
+had no wish to answer any in the present instance.</p>
+
+<p>Neither did he tell Sarella that a dispensation would be necessary;
+still less, that the priest believed the dispensation would have to be
+sought, through the Bishop, of course, from the Papal Delegate, and
+professed himself even uncertain whether the Papal Delegate himself
+might not refer to Rome before granting it, though he (the priest)
+thought it more probable that His Excellency would grant the
+dispensation without such reference.</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin merely gave Sarella to understand that their marriage would
+follow her reception into the Church, and that the necessary instruction
+previous to that reception would take some time.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>As the marriage could not take place without delay, Don Joaquin did not
+wish it to be unreservedly announced; the general inhabitants of the
+range might guess what they chose, but they were not at present to be
+informed.</p>
+
+<p>"Mariquita may tell Gore," he explained to Sarella, "that is a family
+matter."</p>
+
+<p>"And I am sure she will not tell him unless you order her to," said
+Sarella; "she does not think of him in that light."</p>
+
+<p>"What light?" demanded Don Joaquin irritably.</p>
+
+<p>"As one of the family," Sarella replied, without any irritation at all.
+Her placidity of temper was likely to be one of her most convenient
+endowments.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall give her to understand," said Don Joaquin, "that there is no
+restriction on her informing Mr. Gore."</p>
+
+<p>Sarella shrugged her pretty shoulders and made no comment.</p>
+
+<p>Mariquita took her father's intimation as an order and obeyed, though
+surprised that he should not, if he desired Mr. Gore to know of his
+approaching marriage, tell him himself. Possibly, she thought, her
+father was a little shy about such a subject.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gore received her announcement quite coolly, without any
+manifestation of surprise. It had not, as Don Joaquin had hoped it
+might, the least effect of hurrying his own steps.</p>
+
+<p>"Am I," he inquired, "supposed to show that I have been told?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I think so."</p>
+
+<p>So that night when they were alone, after the others had gone to their
+rooms, Gore congratulated his host.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you! You see," said Don Joaquin, assuming a tone of pathos that
+sat most queerly on him, "as time goes on, I should be very lonely."</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head sadly, and Gore endeavored to look duly sympathetic.</p>
+
+<p>"Sarella," the older man proceeded, "could not stop here&mdash;if she were
+not my wife&mdash;after Mariquita had left us."</p>
+
+<p>Gore, who perfectly understood Mariquita's father and his diplomacy,
+would not indulge him by asking if his daughter were, then, likely to
+leave him.</p>
+
+<p>So Don Joaquin sighed and had to go on.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes! It would be very lonely for me, dependent as I am for society on
+Mariquita."</p>
+
+<p>Here Gore, with some inward amusement, could not refrain from accusing
+his possible father-in-law of some hypocrisy; for he was sure the
+elderly gentleman would miss his daughter as little as any father could
+miss his child.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly," he said aloud, "it is hard to think how the range would get
+on without her."</p>
+
+<p>No doubt, her absence would be hard to fill in the matter of usefulness,
+and Gore was inclined to doubt whether Sarella would even wish to fill
+it. He was pretty sure that that young woman would refuse to work as her
+cousin had worked.</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>must</i> get on without her," Don Joaquin agreed, not without doubt,
+"when her time comes for moving to a home of her own."</p>
+
+<p>Still Gore refused to "rise."</p>
+
+<p>"We must be prepared for that," Mariquita's father went on, refilling
+his pipe. "She is grown up. It is natural she should be thinking of her
+own future&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Gore suddenly felt angry with him, instead of being merely amused. To
+him it appeared a profanation of the very idea of Mariquita, to speak of
+her as indulging in surmises and calculations concerning her own
+matrimonial chances.</p>
+
+<p>"It would not," he said, "be unnatural&mdash;but I am sure her mind is given
+to no such thoughts."</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin slightly elevated his eyebrows.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know," he said coldly, "how you can answer for what her mind
+is given to. I, at any rate, must have such thoughts on her account. I
+am not English. English parents may, perhaps, leave all such things to
+chance. We, of my people, are not so. To us it seems the most important
+of his duties for a father to trust to no chances, but arrange and
+provide for his daughter's settlement in life."</p>
+
+<p>Here the old fellow paused, and having shot his bolt, pretended it had
+been a mere parenthesis in answer to an implied criticism.</p>
+
+<p>"But," he continued, "I have wandered from what I was really explaining.
+I was telling that soon I should, in the natural course of things, be
+left here alone, as regards home companionship, unless I myself tried to
+find a mate, so I tried and I have succeeded."</p>
+
+<p>Here he bowed with great majesty and some complacence, as if he might
+have added, "Though you, in your raw youthfulness and conceit, may have
+thought me too old a suitor to win a lovely bride."</p>
+
+<p>Gore responded by the heartiest felicitations. "Sir," he added after a
+brief pause, "since it seems to me that you wish it, I will explain my
+own position. I can well afford to marry. And I would wish very much to
+marry. But there is only one lady whom I have ever met, whom I have now,
+or ever, felt that I would greatly desire to win for my wife."</p>
+
+<p>So far Don Joaquin had listened with an absolutely expressionless
+countenance of polite attention, though he had never been more
+interested.</p>
+
+<p>"The lady," Gore continued, "is your daughter."</p>
+
+<p>(Here that lady's father relaxed the aloofness of his manner, and
+permitted himself a look of benign, though not eager, approval.)</p>
+
+<p>"It may be," the young man went on, "that you have perceived my
+wishes...."</p>
+
+<p>(Don Joaquin would express neither negation nor assent.)</p>
+
+<p>"Anyway, you know them now. But your daughter does not know them. To
+thrust the knowledge of them prematurely upon her would, I am sure, make
+the chance of her responding to them very much less hopeful. Therefore I
+have been slow and cautious in endeavoring to gain even a special
+footing of friendship with her; I have, lately, gained a little. I
+cannot flatter myself that it is more than a little; between us there
+is on her side only the mere dawn of friendship. That being so, I should
+have been unwilling to speak to yourself&mdash;lest it should seem like
+assuming that she had any sort of interest in me beyond what I have
+explained. I speak now because you clearly expect that I should. Well, I
+have spoken. But I am so greatly in eager earnest about this that I ask
+you plainly to allow me to endeavor to proceed with what, I think, you
+almost resent as a timidity of caution. It is my only chance."</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin did not see that at all. If he were to inform Mariquita that
+Mr. Gore wished to become her husband and he, her father, wished her to
+become Mr. Gore's wife, he could not bring himself to picture such
+disobedience as any refusal on her part would amount to.</p>
+
+<p>"Our way," he said, "is more direct than your fanciful English way; it
+regards not a young girl's fanciful delays, and timid uncertainty, but
+her solid welfare, and therefore her solid happiness. In reality it gets
+over her maiden modesty in the best way&mdash;by wise authority. She does not
+have to tell herself baldly, 'I have become in love with this young
+man,' but 'My parents have found this young man worthy to undertake the
+charge of my life and my happiness, and I submit to their experience and
+wisdom.' Then duty will teach her love; a safer teacher than fancy."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope, sir," said Gore, "that you do not yourself propose that
+method."</p>
+
+<p>"And if I did?"</p>
+
+<p>"I would, though more earnestly desirous to win your daughter than I am
+desirous of anything in this life, tell you that I refuse to win her in
+that way. It never would win her."</p>
+
+<p>"'Win her'! She is all duty&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse me! No duty would command her to become my wife if she could
+only do so with repugnance. If you told her it was her duty I should
+tell her it was no such thing."</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin was amazed at such crass stupidity. He flung his open hands
+upwards with angry protest. He was even suspicious. Did the young man
+really <i>want</i> to marry his daughter? It was much more evident that he
+was in earnest now, than it had been to Don Joaquin that he was in
+earnest before.</p>
+
+<p>The elderly half-breed had not the least idea of blaming his own crude
+diplomacy; on the contrary, he had been pluming himself on its success.
+For some time he had desired to obtain from Gore a definite expression
+of his wish to marry Mariquita, and he had obtained it. That it had been
+speedily followed by this further pronouncement, incomprehensible to the
+girl's father, was not <i>his</i> fault, but was due entirely to the
+Englishman's peculiarities, peculiarities that to Don Joaquin seemed
+perverse and almost suspicious.</p>
+
+<p>"If you were a Spaniard," he said stiffly, "you would be grateful to me
+for being willing to influence my daughter in your favor."</p>
+
+<p>Gore knew that he must be disturbed, as it was his rule to speak of
+himself not as a Spaniard, but as an American.</p>
+
+<p>"I am grateful to you, sir, for being willing to let me hope to win your
+daughter for my wife&mdash;most grateful."</p>
+
+<p>"You do not appear grateful to me for my willingness to simplify
+matters."</p>
+
+<p>"They cannot be simplified&mdash;nor hurried. If your daughter can be brought
+to think favorably of me as one who earnestly desires to have the great,
+great honor and privilege of being the guardian of her life and its
+happiness, it must be gradually and by very gentle approaches. I hope
+that she already likes me, but I am sure she does not yet love me."</p>
+
+<p>"Before she has been asked to be your wife! Love you! Certainly not. She
+will love her husband, for that will be her duty."</p>
+
+<p>Gore did not feel at all like laughing; his future father-in-law's
+peculiarities seemed as perverse to him as his own did to Don Joaquin.
+He dreaded their operation; it seemed only too possible that Don Joaquin
+would be led to interference by them, and such interference he feared
+extremely; nor could he endure the idea of Mariquita's being dragooned
+by her father.</p>
+
+<p>"If," he declared stoutly, "you thrust prematurely upon your daughter
+the idea of me as her husband, you will make her detest the thought of
+me, and I never <i>shall</i> be her husband."</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin was offended.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not used to do anything prematurely," he said grimly. "And it may
+be that I understand my daughter, who is of my own race, better than you
+who are not of her race."</p>
+
+<p>"It may be. But I am not certain that it is so. Sir, since you have
+twice alluded to that question of race, you must not be surprised or
+displeased if I remind you that she is as much of my race as of your
+own. Half Spanish she is, but half of English blood."</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin <i>was</i> displeased, but all the same, he did feel that there
+might be something in Gore's argument. He had always thought of
+Mariquita as Spanish like himself; but he had never been unconscious
+that she was unlike himself&mdash;it might possibly be by reason of her
+half-English descent.</p>
+
+<p>"The lady," Gore went on, "whom you yourself are marrying, would perhaps
+understand me better than you appear to do."</p>
+
+<p>This reference to Sarella did not greatly conciliate her betrothed. He
+did not wish her to be occupied in understanding any young man. All the
+same, he was slightly flattered at Gore's having, apparently, a
+confidence in her judgment. Moreover, he knew that it was so late that
+this discussion could not be protracted much longer, and he was not
+willing to say anything like an admission that he had receded (which he
+had not) from his own opinion.</p>
+
+<p>"Her judgment," he said, "is good. And she has a maternal interest in
+Mariquita. I will tell her what you have said."</p>
+
+<p>Gore went to bed smiling to himself at the idea of Sarella's maternal
+interest. She did not strike him as a motherly young lady.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Sarella found considerable enjoyment in the visits to Maxwell
+necessitated by her period of instruction. Each instruction was of
+reasonable length and left plenty of time for other affairs, and that
+time landed Don Joaquin in expenses he had been far from foreseeing.
+Sarella had a fund of mild obstinacy which her placidity of temper
+partly veiled. She intended that considerable additions to the furniture
+of the homestead should be made, and she did <i>not</i> intend to get married
+without some considerable additions to her wardrobe as well. Her
+dresses, she assured Don Joaquin, were all too youthful. "Girl's
+clothes" she called them. She insisted on the necessity of now dressing
+as a matron. "Perhaps," she admitted with sweet ingenuousness, "I have
+dressed too young. One gets into a sort of groove. There was nothing to
+remind me that I had passed beyond the stage of school-girl frocks. But
+a married woman, unless she is a silly, must pull herself up, and adopt
+a matron's style; I would rather now dress a bit too old than too young.
+You don't want people to be saying you have married a flapper!"</p>
+
+<p>She got her own way, and Don Joaquin, had he known anything about it,
+might have discovered that matronly garments were more expensive than a
+girl's. "A girl," Sarella informed Mariquita, "need only be smart. A
+matron's dress must be handsome."</p>
+
+<p>To do her justice, Sarella tried to convince her lover that Mariquita
+also should be provided with new clothes; but he would agree only to one
+new "suit," as he called it, for his daughter to wear at his wedding. He
+had no idea of spending his own money on an extensive outfit "for
+another man's wife." That expense would be Gore's. Even in Sarella's
+case he would never have agreed to buy all she wanted had it been
+announced at once, but she was far too astute for any such mistake as
+that. It appeared that there must be some delay before their marriage,
+and she utilized it by spreading her gradual demands over as long a time
+as she could.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the expense, too, Don Joaquin managed to reduce by discovering a
+market he had hardly thought of till now, for the furs of animals he had
+himself shot; some of these animals were rather uncommon, some even
+rare, and he became aware of their commercial value only when bargaining
+for their making up into coats or cloaks for Sarella. His subsequent
+visits to this "store" in order to dispose of similar furs against a
+reduction in its charges for Sarella's clothing, he studiously concealed
+from her, but Sarella knew all about it.</p>
+
+<p>"Why," she said to herself, really admiring his sharpness, "the old boy
+is making a <i>profit</i> on the bargain. He's getting more for his furs than
+he's spending."</p>
+
+<p>She was careful not to let him guess that she knew this; but she
+promised herself to "take it out in furniture." And she kept her
+promise. It was Sarella's principle that a person who did not keep
+promises made to herself would never keep those made to other people.</p>
+
+<p>"You really must," she told him, "have some of those furs made into a
+handsome winter jacket for Mariquita. They cost you nothing, and she
+must have a winter jacket. The one she has was got at the Convent&mdash;and a
+present, too, I believe. It was handsome once&mdash;and that shows how
+economical <i>good</i> clothes are; they last so&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>(Don Joaquin thought, "especially economical when they are presents.")</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;But Mariquita has grown out of it. She is so tall. A new one made of
+cloth from the store would cost more than one for me, because she is so
+tall. But those furs cost you nothing."</p>
+
+<p>She knew he would not say, "No, but I can sell them."</p>
+
+<p>"Besides," she added, "if you offered them some more furs at the store
+they might take something off the charge of making and lining. It is
+often done. I'll ask them about it if you like."</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin did not at all desire her to do that.</p>
+
+<p>"No necessity," he said hastily; "Mariquita shall have the jacket. I
+will take the furs and give the order myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Only be sure to insist that the lining is silk. They have some silvery
+gray silk that would just go with those furs. And Mariquita would <i>pay</i>
+good dressing. Her style wants it. She's solid, you know."</p>
+
+<p>Mariquita did get the jacket. But it was not of the fur Sarella had
+meant&mdash;her father knew by that time the value of that sort of fur. And
+Sarella knew that she had made it quite clear which sort she had asked
+him to supply. She was amused by his craftiness, and though a little
+ashamed of him, she was readier to forgive his stinginess than if it had
+been illustrated in a garment for herself. After all, it was perhaps as
+well that Mariquita's should not be so valuable as her own.</p>
+
+<p>"And married women," she reminded herself, "do have to dress handsomer
+than girls. And Mariquita will never know the difference."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I</i> suggested," she told her cousin, "the same gray fur as mine. But I
+daresay a brown fur will suit your coloring better, and it's <i>younger</i>.
+Anything gray (in the fur line) can be worn with mourning, and nothing's
+so elderly as mourning."</p>
+
+<p>It was the first present her father had ever given Mariquita, and she
+thanked him with a warmth of gratefulness that ought to have made him
+ashamed. But Don Joaquin was not subject to the unpleasant consciousness
+of shame. On the contrary, he thought with less complacence of
+Mariquita's thanks than of the fact that he had given her a necessary
+winter garment at a profit&mdash;for he had taken the other furs to the store
+and received for them a substantial cash payment over and above the
+clearing of the charges for making up and lining the commoner skins of
+which the winter jacket was made.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder," thought Sarella, "what that lining is? It looks silky, but
+I'm sure it isn't silk. I daresay it's warmer. And after all, Gore can
+get it changed for silk when it's worn out; the fur will outlast two
+linings at least. It's not so delicate as mine. I'm afraid mine'll
+<i>flatten</i>. I must look to that."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Meanwhile the instructions did proceed, and Sarella did not mind them
+much. Perhaps she was not always attending very laboriously&mdash;she had a
+good deal to think of; but she listened with all due docility, and with
+quite reasonable, if not absorbed, interest; and by carefully abstaining
+from asking questions, did not often betray any misunderstanding of the
+nun's explanations, for it was by one of the nuns that all but the
+preliminary instructions were given. Sarella rather liked her, deciding
+that she was "a good sort," and, though neither young nor extremely
+attractive, she was "as kind as kind," and so intensely full of her
+subject that Sarella could not help gathering a higher appreciation of
+its importance. In Sarella the earnest expounder of Catholic doctrine
+and practice had no bigotry and not much prejudice to work against;
+only a thick crust of ignorance, and perhaps a thicker layer of natural
+indifference. The little she had heard about the Catholic Church was
+from Puritan neighbors in a very small town of a remote corner of New
+England, and if it had made any particular impression, must have been
+found unfavorable; but Sarella had been too little interested in
+religion to adopt its rancors, her whole disposition, easy,
+self-indulgent and material, being opposed to rancor as to all rough,
+sharp, and uncomfortable things.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the nun was hardly likely to overcome the indifference, and
+perhaps she knew it. But she prayed for Sarella much oftener than she
+talked to her, and had much more confidence in what Our Lord Himself
+might do for her than in anything that she could.</p>
+
+<p>"After all," she would urge, "it is more Your own business than mine. I
+did not make her, nor die for her. Master, do Your own work that I
+cannot."</p>
+
+<p>Besides, she, who had no belief in chance, would cheer herself by
+remembering that He had so ordered His patient providence as to bring
+the girl to the gate of the Church, by such ways as she was so far
+capable of. He had begun the work; He would not half do it. He would
+make it, the nun trusted, a double work. For in, half-obstinately,
+insisting that Sarella must become a Catholic before he married her, the
+old Spaniard, half-heathen by lifelong habit, had begun to awake to some
+sort at least of Catholic feeling, some beginning of Catholic practice,
+for now he was occasionally hearing Mass, and that first lethargic
+movement of a better spirit in him might, with God's blessing, would,
+lead to something more genuinely spiritual.</p>
+
+<p>The nun attributed those beginnings to the prayers of the old
+half-breed's daughter. As yet she knew her but little, but already, by
+the <i>discretio spiritum</i>, which is, after all, perhaps only another name
+for the clear instinct in things of grace earned by those who live by
+grace, the elderly nun, plain and simple, recognized in Mariquita one of
+a rare, unfettered spirituality.</p>
+
+<p>Sarella had not, at all events consciously, to herself, told her
+instructress much about her young cousin.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mariquita!" she had said, not ill-naturedly, "she lives up in the
+moon."</p>
+
+<p>("Higher up than that, I expect," thought Sister Aquinas, gathering the
+impression that Mariquita was not held of much account in the family.)</p>
+
+<p>"But she is not an idler?" said the nun.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, not a bit," Sarella agreed with perfectly ungrudging honesty. "An
+idler! No; she works a lot harder than she ought; harder than she would
+if I had the arranging of things. Not quite so hard as she used, though,
+for I have made her father get some help, and he will have to get more
+if Mariquita leaves us."</p>
+
+<p>Perceiving that the nun did not smile, but retreated into what Sarella
+called her "inside expression," that acute young woman guessed that she
+might have conveyed the idea that her future stepdaughter was to be sent
+away on her father's marriage.</p>
+
+<p>"There's always," she explained carelessly, "the chance of her marrying.
+She is handsome in her own way, and I don't think she need remain long
+unmarried if she chose to marry. Not that <i>she</i> ever thinks of it."</p>
+
+<p>("I expect not," thought Sister Aquinas.)</p>
+
+<p>This was about as near to gossip as they ever got. Sarella, indeed,
+would have liked the nun better if she had been "more chatty." I don't
+know that Sister Aquinas really disliked chat so long as it wasn't
+gossip, but the truth was, she did not find the time allowed for each
+instruction at all superfluously long, and did not wish to let it slip
+away in mere talk.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was only occasionally that Mariquita accompanied Sarella when the
+latter went to the convent for instruction. On one of those occasions
+the Loretto Convent near Denver was mentioned, and Sister Aquinas said:</p>
+
+<p>"I had a niece there a few years ago&mdash;Eleanor Hurst. I wonder if you
+know her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes! Quite well." Mariquita answered, with the sort of shining
+interest that always made her look suddenly younger. "A friend of ours
+brought me news, lately, that she has become a Carmelite."</p>
+
+<p>"What is a Carmelite?" Sarella asked.</p>
+
+<p>"A nun of one of the great Contemplative Orders," Sister Aquinas
+explained, turning politely to Sarella. "It is a much rarer vocation
+than that of active nuns, like ourselves. Carmelites do not teach
+school, or have orphanages, or homes for broken old men or women, nor
+nurse the sick, either in their homes or in hospital."</p>
+
+<p>"Sounds pretty useless," Sarella remarked carelessly; "what do they do
+anyway?"</p>
+
+<p>"They are not at all useless," the nun answered, smiling good-humoredly.
+"Married women are not useless, though they do not do any of those
+things either."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not. But they <i>are</i> married. They make their husbands
+comfortable&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The nun could not help taking her own turn of interrupting, and said
+with a little laugh:</p>
+
+<p>"Not quite always, perhaps."</p>
+
+<p>"The good ones do."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps not invariably. Some even pious women are not remarkable for
+making their husbands comfortable."</p>
+
+<p>Sarella laughed, and the elderly nun went on.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, it is the vocation of married women to do as you say. And I
+hope most do it, that and setting the example of happy Christian homes.
+I do not really mean to judge of the vocation by those who fail to
+fulfill it. It is God's vocation for the vast majority of His daughters.
+But not for all."</p>
+
+<p>"There aren't husbands enough for all of us," Sarella, who was
+"practical" and slightly statistical, remarked, with the complacence of
+one for whom a husband had been forthcoming.</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly," agreed the elderly nun, laughing cheerfully, "so it's a good
+thing, you see, that there are other vocations; ours, for instance."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," Sarella protested with hasty politeness, "no one could think
+people like you useless. You do so much good."</p>
+
+<p>"So do the Carmelites. Only their way of it is not quite the same. Would
+you say that Shakespeare was useless, or Dante?"</p>
+
+<p>To tell truth, Sarella had never in her life said anything about either,
+or thought anything. Nevertheless, she was aware that they were
+considered important.</p>
+
+<p>"They did not," the nun said eagerly, "teach schools, or nurse the sick,
+or do any of those things for the sake of which some people kindly
+forgive us for being nuns&mdash;not all people, unfortunately. Yet they are
+recognized as not having been useless. They are not useless now, long
+after they are dead. Mankind admits its debt to them. They <i>served</i>, and
+they serve still. Not with physical service, like nurses, or doctors, or
+cooks, or house-servants. But they contributed to the <i>quality</i> of the
+human race. So have many great men and women who never wrote a
+line&mdash;Joan of Arc, for instance. The contribution of those illustrious
+servants was eminent and famous, but many who have never been famous,
+who never have been known, have contributed in a different degree or
+fashion to the quality of mankind: innumerable priests, unknown perhaps
+outside their parishes; innumerable nuns, innumerable wives and mothers;
+and a Carmelite nun so contributes, eminently, immeasurably except by
+God, though invisibly, and inaudibly. Not only by her prayers, I mean
+her prayers of intercession, though again it is only God who can measure
+what she does by them. But just by being what she is, vast, unknown
+numbers of people are brought into the Catholic Church not only by her
+prayers but by her life. Some read themselves into the true faith, into
+<i>any</i> faith; they are very few in comparison of those who come to
+believe. Some are preached into the Church&mdash;a few only, again, compared
+with the number of those who do come to her. What brings most of those
+who are brought? I believe it is a certain quality that they have become
+aware of in the Catholic Church, that brings the immense majority. The
+young man in the factory, or in the army, in a ship, or on a
+ranch&mdash;anywhere&mdash;falls into companionship with a Catholic, or with a
+group of Catholics; and in him, or them, he gradually perceives this
+<i>quality</i> which he has never perceived elsewhere. It may be that the
+Catholics he has come to know are not perfect at all. The quality is not
+all of their own earning; it is partly an inheritance: some of it from
+their mothers, some from their sisters, some from their friends; ever so
+much of it from the saints, who contributed it to the air of the Church
+that Catholics breathe. The Contemplatives are contributing it every
+day, and all day long. Each, in her case, behind her grille, is forever
+giving something immeasurable, except by God, to the transcendent
+quality of the Catholic Church. This may be, and mostly is, unsuspected
+by almost all her fellow-creatures; but not unfelt by quite all. A
+Carmelite's convent is mostly in a great city; countless human beings
+pass its walls. They cannot <i>help</i>, seeing them, saying to their own
+hearts, 'In there, human creatures, like me, are living unlike me. They
+have given up <i>everything</i>&mdash;and for no possible reward <i>here</i>. Ambition
+cannot account for <i>any part of it even</i>. They cannot become anything
+great even in their Church, nor famous; they will die as little known or
+regarded as they live. They can win no popularity. They obtain no
+applause. They are called useless for their pains. They are scolded for
+doing what they do, though they would not be scolded if they were mere
+old-maids who pampered and indulged only themselves. The wicked women of
+this city are less decried than they. They are abused, and they have to
+be content to be abused, remembering that their Master said they must
+be content to fare no better than Himself. It is something above this
+world, that can only be accounted for by another world, and such a
+belief in it as is not proved by those who may try to grab two worlds,
+this one with their right hands, the next with their left. The life
+almost all of us declare impossible here on earth, they are living.'
+Such thoughts as these, broken thoughts, hit full in the face numbers of
+passers-by every day, and how many days are there not in a year&mdash;in a
+Carmelite's own lifetime. They are witnesses to Jesus Christ, who cannot
+be explained away. A chaplain told me that nothing pleased his soldiers
+so much as to get him in the midst of a group of them and say, 'Tell us
+about the nuns, Father. Tell us about the Carmelites and the Poor
+Clares&mdash;'"</p>
+
+<p>"I knew a girl called Clare," Sarella commented brightly; "she was as
+poor as a church mouse, but she married a widower with no children and a
+<i>huge</i> fortune. I beg your pardon&mdash;but the name reminded me of her."</p>
+
+<p>Sister Aquinas laughed gently.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, she was a useful friend to you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all. She never did a hand's turn for anyone. I don't know what
+she would have done if she <i>hadn't</i> married a rich man, she was so
+helpless. But you were saying?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only, that his soldiers loved to hear the chaplain tell them about the
+Contemplative nuns. Nothing interested them more. I am sure it was not
+thrown away on them. It was like showing them a high and lovely place. I
+should think no one can look at a splendid white mountain and not want
+to be climbing. That was all."</p>
+
+<p>Would Sarella ever want to climb? Sister Aquinas did not know, nor do I
+know.</p>
+
+<p>Her eagerness had been, perhaps, partly spurred by other criticism than
+Sarella's; Sarella was not the only one who had told Nelly Hurst's aunt
+that it was a pity the girl had "decided on one of the useless Orders."</p>
+
+<p>That every phase of life approved by the Catholic Church, as the
+Contemplative Orders are, must be useful, Sister Aquinas knew well. And
+it wounded her to hear her niece's high choice belittled. She could not
+help knowing that this belittling was simply a naive confession of
+materialism, and an equally naive expression of human selfishness. We
+approve the vocation of nuns whose work is for our own bodies; we cannot
+easily see the splendor of <i>direct</i> service of God Himself who has no
+material needs of His own. That God's most usual course of Providence
+calls us to serve Him by serving our fellows, we see clearly enough,
+because it suits us to see it; but we are too purblind to perceive that
+even that Service need not in every case be material service, and it
+scandalizes us to remember that God chooses in some instance to be
+served <i>directly</i>, not by the service of any creature; because the
+instances are less common, we are shocked when asked to admit that they
+exist. If Christ were still visibly on earth, millions would be
+delighted to feed Him, but it would annoy almost all of us to see even a
+few serving Him by sitting idle at His feet listening. Hardly any of us
+but think Martha was doing more that afternoon at Bethany than her
+sister, and it troubles us that Jesus Christ thought differently. It
+was so easy to sit still and listen&mdash;that is why the huge majority of us
+find it impossible, and are angry that here and there a Contemplative
+nun wants to do it.</p>
+
+<p>Of liberty we prattle in every language; and most loudly do they scream
+of it who are most angry that God takes leave to exist, and that many of
+His creatures still refuse to deny His existence; that many admit His
+right to command, and their own obligation to obey. These
+liberty-brawlers would be the first to concede to every woman the
+"inalienable right" to lead a corrupt life, destructive of society, and
+the last to allow to a handful of women out of the world's population
+the right to live a life of spotless whiteness at the immediate feet of
+the Master they love.</p>
+
+<p>Was Sister Aquinas so carried away as to be forgetful that Sarella was
+not the only auditor? Mariquita had listened too.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>During these weeks of Sarella's instruction she achieved something which
+to her seemed a greater triumph than her succession of cumulative
+triumphs in the matters of trousseau and of furniture. She persuaded Don
+Joaquin to buy a motor-car!</p>
+
+<p>She would not have succeeded in this attempt but for certain
+circumstances which in reality robbed her success of some of its
+triumph. In the first place, the machine was not a new one; in the
+second, Don Joaquin took it instead of a debt which he did not think
+likely to be paid. Then also he had arrived at the conclusion that so
+many long rides as Sarella's frequent journeys to Maxwell involved, were
+likely to prove costly. They took a good deal out of the horses, even
+without accidents occurring, and an accident had nearly occurred which
+would have very largely reduced the value of one of the best of his
+horses&mdash;the one, as it happened, best fitted for carrying a lady.
+Sarella all but let the horse down on a piece of ragged, stony road: Don
+Joaquin being himself at her elbow and watchful, had just succeeded in
+averting the accident; but lover as he was, he was able to see that
+Sarella would never be a horse-woman. She disliked riding, and he was
+not such a tyrant as to insist on her doing a thing she never would do
+well, and had no pleasure in doing. On the whole, he made up his mind
+that it would be more economical to take this second-hand car in
+settlement of a bad debt than continue running frequent risks of injury
+to his horses.</p>
+
+<p>The acquisition of the car made it possible to shorten the period of
+these journeys to Maxwell; it did not require a night's rest, and the
+trip itself was much more rapidly accomplished.</p>
+
+<p>The period of Sarella's instruction was not one of idleness on Gore's
+part, in reference to Mariquita. It seemed to him that he really was
+making some advance. He saw much more of her than used to be the case.
+She was now accustomed to chance meetings with him, or what she took for
+chance meetings, and did not make hasty escape from them, or treat him
+during them with reserve. They were, in fact, friends and almost
+confidential friends; but if Gore had continued as wise as he had been
+when discussing the situation with her father, he would have been able
+to see that it did not amount to more than that; that they were friends
+indeed because Mariquita was wholly free from any suspicion that more
+than that could come of it. She had simply come to a settled opinion
+that he was nice, a kind man, immensely pleasanter as a companion than
+any man she had known before, a trustworthy friend who could tell her of
+much whereof she had been ignorant. She began in a fashion to know "his
+people," too; and he saw with extreme pleasure that she was interested
+in them. That was natural enough. She knew almost nobody; as a grown-up
+woman, had really known none of her own sex till Sarella came; it would
+have been strange if she had not heard with interest about women whose
+portraits were so affectionately drawn for her, who, she could easily
+discern, were pleasant and refined, cheerful, bright, amusing, and kind,
+too; cordial, friendly people.</p>
+
+<p>All the same, Gore's talk of his family did connote a great advance in
+intimacy with Mariquita. He seemed to assume that she might know them
+herself, and she gathered the notion that when he had bought a range,
+some of them would come out and live with him, so that she said nothing
+to contradict a possibility that he had after all only implied. Gore,
+meanwhile, with no suspicion of her idea that his sisters might come out
+to visit him, and noting with great satisfaction that she never
+contradicted his hints and hopes that they might all meet, attached more
+importance to it than he ought. Perhaps he built more hope on this than
+on any one thing besides. He was fully aware that in all their
+intercourse there was no breath of flirtation. But he could not picture
+Mariquita flirting, and did not want to picture it. Meanwhile their
+intercourse was daily growing to an intimacy, or he took it for such.
+He did not sufficiently weigh the fact that of herself she said little.
+She was most ready to be interested in all he told her of himself, his
+previous life, his friends; but of her own real life, which was inward
+and apart from the few events of her experience, she did not speak. This
+did not strike him as reserve, for those who show a warm, friendly
+interest in others do not seem reserved.</p>
+
+<p>Gore never startled her by gallantry or compliments; his sympathy and
+admiration were too respectful for compliment, and a certain instinct
+warned him that gallantry would have perplexed and disconcerted her.</p>
+
+<p>None the less, he believed that he was making progress, and the course
+of it was full of beautiful and happy moments. So things went on, with,
+as Gore thought, sure though not rapid pace. He was too much in earnest
+to risk haste, and also too happy in the present to make blundering
+clutches at the future. Then with brutal suddenness Don Joaquin
+intervened.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>He met his daughter and Gore returning to the homestead, Mariquita's
+face bright with friendly interest in all that Gore had been telling
+her, and the young man's certainly not less happy. Don Joaquin was out
+of temper; Sarella and he had had an economic difference and he had been
+aware that she had deceived him.</p>
+
+<p>He barely returned Gore's and Mariquita's greeting, and his brow was
+black. It was not till some time later that he and Gore found themselves
+alone together. Then he said ill-humoredly:</p>
+
+<p>"You and Mariquita were riding this afternoon&mdash;a good while, I think."</p>
+
+<p>"It did not seem long to <i>me</i>, as you can understand," Gore replied
+smiling, and anxious to ignore the old fellow's bad temper.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps it does not seem long to you since you began to speak of
+marrying my daughter."</p>
+
+<p>"I did not begin to speak of it. I should have preferred to hold my
+tongue till I could feel I had some right to speak of it. It was you,
+sir, who began."</p>
+
+<p>"And that was a long time ago. Have you yet made my daughter understand
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot be sure yet."</p>
+
+<p>"But I must be sure. To-morrow I shall see that she understands."</p>
+
+<p>Gore was aghast.</p>
+
+<p>"I earnestly beg you to abstain from doing that," he begged, too anxious
+to prevent Don Joaquin's interference to risk precipitating it by
+showing the anger he felt.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you no longer wish to marry her. If so, it would be advisable
+to reduce your intercourse to common civilities&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Sir," Gore interrupted, "I cannot allow you to go on putting any case
+founded on such an assumption as that of my no longer wishing to marry
+your daughter. I wish it more every day ..."</p>
+
+<p>The young man had a right to be angry, and he was angry, and perhaps was
+not unwilling to show it. But it was necessary that he should for every
+reason be moderate in letting his resentment appear. To have a loud
+quarrel with a prospective father-in-law is seldom a measure likely to
+help the suitor's wishes.</p>
+
+<p>He in his turn was interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>"Then," said Don Joaquin, "it is time you told her so."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not think so. I think it's <i>not</i> time, and that to tell her so now
+would greatly injure my chance of success."</p>
+
+<p>"I will answer for your success. I shall myself speak to her. I shall
+tell her that you wish to marry her, and that I have, some time ago,
+given my full consent."</p>
+
+<p>Gore was well aware that Don Joaquin could not "answer for his success."
+It was horrible to him to think of Mariquita being bullied, and he was
+sure that her father intended to bully her. Anything would be better
+than that. He was intensely earnest in his wish to succeed; it was that
+earnestness that made him willing to be patient; but he was, if
+possible, even more intensely determined that the poor girl should not
+be tormented and dragooned by her tyrannical father. That, he would
+risk a great deal to prevent, as far as his own power went.</p>
+
+<p>"I most earnestly beg you not to do that," he said in a very low voice.</p>
+
+<p>"But I intend to do it. If you choose to say that you do not, after all,
+wish to marry her, then I will merely suggest that you should leave us."</p>
+
+<p>"I have just told you the exact contrary&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Then, I shall tell Mariquita so to-morrow, stating that your proposal
+meets with my full consent, and that in view of her prolonged intimacy
+with you, her consent is taken by me for granted. I do take it for
+granted."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I could. But I cannot. Sir, I still entreat you to abandon this
+intention of yours."</p>
+
+<p>"Only on condition that you make the proposal yourself without any
+further delay."</p>
+
+<p>From this decision the obstinate old father would not recede. The
+discussion continued for some time, but he seemed to grow only more
+fixed in his intention, and certainly he became more acerbated in
+temper. Gore was sure that if he were allowed to take up the matter with
+his daughter, it would be with even more harshly dictatorial tyranny
+than had seemed probable at first.</p>
+
+<p>Finally Gore promised that he would himself propose to Mariquita in form
+on the morrow, Don Joaquin being with difficulty induced to undertake on
+his side that he would not "prepare" her for what was coming. He gave
+this promise quite as reluctantly as Gore gave his. The younger man
+dreaded the bad effects of precipitancy; the elder, who had plenty of
+self-conceit behind his dry dignity, relinquished very unwillingly the
+advantages he counted upon from his diplomacy, and the weight of his
+authority being known beforehand to be on the suitor's side. If Gore
+were really so uncertain of success, it would be a feather in the
+paternal cap to have insured that success by his solemn indications of
+approval. But he saw that without his promise of absolute abstention
+from interference, Gore would not agree to make his proposal, so Don
+Joaquin ungraciously yielded the point perhaps chiefly because important
+business called him away from the morrow's dawn till late at night.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>After breakfast next morning Sarella, not quite accidentally, found
+herself alone with Gore.</p>
+
+<p>"You gentlemen," she said, "did go to bed sometime, I suppose. But I
+thought you never <i>were</i> going to stop your talk&mdash;and to tell you the
+truth, I wished my bedroom was farther away, or had a thicker wall. <i>I</i>
+go to bed to sleep. You were at it two hours and twenty minutes."</p>
+
+<p>Gore duly apologized for the postponement of her sleep, and wondered
+<i>how</i> thin the wooden partition might be between her room and that in
+which the long discussion had taken place.</p>
+
+<p>"These partitions of thin boarding are wretched," she informed him,
+"especially as they are only stained. If they were even papered it would
+prevent the tobacco-smoke coming through the cracks where the boards
+have shrunk." Gore could not help smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"I think," he said, "you want to let me know that our talk was not quite
+inaudible."</p>
+
+<p>"No, it wasn't. Not quite. I'll tell you how much was audible. That you
+were talking about Mariquita, and that you were arguing, and I think you
+were both angry. I am sure <i>he</i> was."</p>
+
+<p>"So was I; though not so loud, I hope."</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, Mr. Gore. You weren't loud at all. But I knew you were
+angry. And so you ought to have been. Why on earth can't he keep his
+fingers out of the pot? You and Mariquita didn't interfere in his love
+affair, and he'll do no good interfering in yours."</p>
+
+<p>Gore laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"So you heard it all!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"No. If you had talked as loud as he did I should. But you didn't. It
+was easy to hear him say that to-morrow he would go and order Mariquita
+to marry you. If that had been the end of it, I just believe I should
+have dressed myself and come in to tell him not to be silly. But it
+wasn't the end. Was it?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. To stop <i>that</i> plan I promised I would propose to Mariquita
+to-day&mdash;only he was to say nothing about it to her first."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, I don't know as he has done any harm. You might do worse."</p>
+
+<p>"I might do better."</p>
+
+<p>"What better?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a bit."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not so sure. I don't know that any <i>harm</i> would come of waiting a
+bit, and I daresay it's all very pleasant meanwhile. But you can go on
+with your love-making after you're engaged just as well as before."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! If we <i>were</i> engaged!"</p>
+
+<p>"Pfush!" quoth Sarella, inventing a word which stood her in stead of
+"Pshaw."</p>
+
+<p>Gore had to laugh again, and no doubt her good-natured certainty
+encouraged him&mdash;albeit he did not believe she knew Mariquita.</p>
+
+<p>"What o'clock shall you propose?" she inquired coolly.</p>
+
+<p>Of course he could not tell her.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess," she said, "it will be between two and three. Dinner at
+twelve. Digestion and preliminaries, 12:45 to 1:45. Proposal 2:45 say.
+You will be engaged by 2:50."</p>
+
+<p>As before, Gore liked the encouragement though very largely discounting
+its worth.</p>
+
+<p>"On the whole," Sarella observed, "I daresay my old man has done
+good&mdash;as he has made himself scarce. If he hadn't threatened to put his
+own foot in it, you might have gone on staring up at Mariquita in the
+stars till she was forty, and then it might have struck you that you
+could get on fine without her."</p>
+
+<p>Sarella evidently thought that nothing was to be done before the time
+she had indicated; during the morning she was in evidence as usual, but
+immediately after dinner she retreated to her studies, and was seen no
+more for a long time.</p>
+
+<p>Gore boldly announced his intention to be idle and told Mariquita she
+must be idle too, begging her to ride with him. To himself it seemed as
+if everyone about the place must see that something was in the wind; but
+the truth was that everyone had been so long expecting something
+definite to happen without hearing of it, that some of them had decided
+that Gore and Mariquita had fixed up their engagement already at some
+unsuspected moment, and the rest had almost ceased to expect to hear
+anything.</p>
+
+<p>As to Mariquita, she was clearly unsuspicious that this afternoon was to
+have any special significance for her. Always cheerful and
+unembarrassed, she was exactly her usual self, untroubled by the
+faintest presentiment of fateful events. Her ready agreement to Gore's
+proposal that they should ride together was, he knew well, of no real
+good omen. It made him have a guilty feeling, as if he were getting her
+out under false pretences.</p>
+
+<p>There was so happy a light of perfect, confiding friendliness upon her
+face that it seemed almost impossible to cloud it by the suggestion of
+anything that would be different from simple friendship. But must it be
+clouded by such a suggestion? "Clouding" means darkening; was it really
+impossible for that light, so trusting and so contented, of
+unquestioning friendship, to be changed without being rendered less
+bright? Must Gore assume her to be specially incapable of an affection
+deeper than even friendship? No; of anything good she was capable; no
+depths of love could be beyond her, and he was sure that her nature was
+one of deep affectionateness, left unclaimed till now. The real
+loneliness of her life, he told himself, had lain in this very depth of
+unclaimed lovingness. And he told himself, too, not untruly, that she
+had been less lonely of late.</p>
+
+<p>Gore might, he felt, hope to awake all that dormant treasure of
+affection&mdash;if he had time! But he had no longer time. He did truly,
+though not altogether, shrink from the task he had set himself to-day.
+He had a genuine reluctance to risk spoiling that happy content of hers;
+yet he could not say it was worse than a risk. There was the counter
+possibility of that happy content changing into something lovelier.</p>
+
+<p>That she was not incapable of love he told himself with full assurance,
+and he was half-disposed to believe that she was one who would never
+love till asked for her love.</p>
+
+<p>Sarella might be nearer right than he had been. She was of much coarser
+fibre than Mariquita, and perhaps he had made too much of that, for she
+was a woman at all events, and shrewd, watchful and a looker-on with the
+proverbial advantages (maybe) over the actors themselves. Sarella knew
+how Mariquita spoke of him, though he did not believe that between the
+two cousins there had been confidences about himself; not real
+confidences, though Sarella was just the girl to "chaff" Mariquita about
+himself, and would know how her chaff had been taken. At all events, Don
+Joaquin must be forestalled; his blundering interference must be
+prevented, and it could only be prevented by Gore keeping his word and
+speaking himself.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>He had kept his word, and had spoken. They had been out together a long
+time when the opportunity came; they had dismounted, and the horses were
+resting. He and she were sitting in the shade of a small group of trees,
+to two of which the horses were tied. Their talk had turned naturally,
+and with scarcely any purposeful guidance of his, in a direction that
+helped him. And Mariquita talked with frank unreserve; she felt at home
+with him now, and her natural silence had long before now been melted by
+his sincerity; her silence of habit was <i>chiefly</i> habit, due not to
+distrust nor a guarded prudence, but to the much simpler fact that till
+his arrival, she had never since her home-coming been called upon to
+speak in any real sense by anyone who cared to hear her, or who had an
+interest in what she might have to say.</p>
+
+<p>His proposal did not come with the least abruptness, but it was clear
+and unmistakeable when it came, and she understood&mdash;Mariquita could
+understand a plain meaning as well as anyone. She did not interrupt, nor
+avert her gaze. Indeed, she turned her eyes, which had been looking far
+away across the lovely, empty prairie to the horizon, to him as he
+spoke, and her hands ceased their idle pulling at the grass beside her.
+In her eyes, as she listened, there was a singular shining, and
+presently they held a glistening like the dew in early morning flowers.</p>
+
+<p>Gore had not moved any nearer to her, nor did he as he ceased. One hand
+of hers she moved nearer to him, now, though not so as to touch him.</p>
+
+<p>"That is what you want?" she said. "Is that what you have been wanting
+all the time?"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice was rather low, but most clear, and it had no reproach.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. What can you say to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can only say how grateful it makes me."</p>
+
+<p>Her words almost astonished him. Though he might have known that she
+must say only exactly what was in her mind. They conveyed in themselves
+no refusal, but he knew at once there was no hope for him in them.</p>
+
+<p>"Grateful!" He exclaimed. "As if I could help it!"</p>
+
+<p>"And as if I could help being grateful. It is so great a thing! For you
+to wish that. There could be nothing greater. I can never forget it. You
+must never think that I could forget it ... I&mdash;you know, Mr. Gore, that
+I am not like most girls, being so very ignorant. I have never read a
+novel. Even the nuns told me that some of them are beautiful and not bad
+at all, but the contrary. Only, I have never read any. I know they are
+full of this matter&mdash;love and marriage. They are great things, and
+concern nearly all the men and women in the world, but not quite all. I
+do not think I ever said to myself, 'They don't concern <i>you</i>.' I do not
+think I ever thought about it, but if I had, I believe I should have
+known that that matter would never concern me. Yet I do not want you to
+misunderstand&mdash;Oh, if I could make you understand, please! I know that
+it is a great thing, love and marriage, God's way for most men and
+women. And I think it a wonderful, great thing that a man should wish
+that for himself and me; should think that with me he could be happier
+than in any other way. Of course, I never thought anyone would feel
+that. It is a thing to thank you for, and always I shall thank you...."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it impossible?"</p>
+
+<p>She paused an infinitesimal moment and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Just that. Impossible."</p>
+
+<p>"Would it be fair to ask why 'impossible'?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not unfair at all. But perhaps I cannot answer. I will try to answer.
+When you told me what you wanted it pleased me because you wanted it,
+and it hurt me because I (who had never thought about it before) knew at
+once that it was not possible to do what you wanted, and I would so much
+rather be able to please you."</p>
+
+<p>"You will never be able to do anything else but please me. Your refusing
+cannot change your being yourself."</p>
+
+<p>Gore could not worry her with demands for reasons. He knew there was no
+one else. He knew she was not incapable of loving&mdash;for he knew, better
+than ever, that she loved greatly and deeply all whom she knew. Nay, he
+knew that she loved <i>him</i>, among them, but more than any of them. And
+yet he saw that she was simply right. What he had asked was "impossible,
+just that." Better than himself she would love no one, and in the
+fashion of a wife she would love no one, ever.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, he asked her a question, not to harry her but because of her
+father. "Perhaps you have resolved never to marry," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I never thought of it. But, as soon as I knew what you were saying, I
+knew I should never marry anyone. It was not a resolution. It was just a
+certainty. Alas! our resolutions are not certainties."</p>
+
+<p>"But," Gore said gently, feeling it necessary to prepare her, "your
+father may wish you to marry."</p>
+
+<p>She paused, dubiously, and her brown skin reddened a little.</p>
+
+<p>"You think so? Yes, he may," she answered in a troubled voice; for she
+feared her father, more even than she was conscious of.</p>
+
+<p>"I think he does," Gore said, not watching the poor girl's troubled
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"He wants me to marry you?" she inquired anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid so; ever since he made up his mind. I do not think he liked
+the idea of letting you marry me till long after he saw what I hoped
+for. You see, I began to hope for it from the very first&mdash;from the day
+when we first met, by the river. He did not like me then; he did not
+know whether to approve of me or not. And at first he was inclined to
+approve all the less because he saw I wanted to win you for myself. I
+don't know that he likes me much even now; but he approves, and he
+approves of my plan. You know that once he has made up his mind to
+approve a plan, he likes it more and more. He gets determined and
+obstinate about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. He will be angry."</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid so. But&mdash;it is because he thinks it a father's duty to
+arrange for his daughter's future, and this plan suited him."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes! I know he is a good man. He will feel he is right in being
+angry."</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't. He will be wrong. Though he is your father, he has not the
+right to try and force you to do what you say is impossible."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said gently, "it is impossible. But I shall not be able to
+make him see that."</p>
+
+<p>"I see it. And it concerns me more than it concerns him."</p>
+
+<p>"You are more kind than anyone I ever heard of," she told him. "I never
+dared to hope you would come to see that&mdash;that it is impossible."</p>
+
+<p>"Can you tell him why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I do not quite understand you."</p>
+
+<p>"It seems a long time ago, now, to me since I asked you if you could
+come to love me and be my wife. Everything seems changed and different.
+I wonder if I could guess why you knew instantly that it was
+impossible. It might help you with your father."</p>
+
+<p>Mariquita listened, and gave no prohibition.</p>
+
+<p>"I think," he said, "you knew it was impossible, because my words taught
+you, if you did not know already, that you could be no man's wife&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes! That is true."</p>
+
+<p>"But perhaps they taught you also something else, which you may not have
+known before&mdash;that you could belong only to God."</p>
+
+<p>"I have known that always," she answered simply.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIX.</h2>
+
+
+<p>When Don Joaquin returned, he was in an unusually bad temper, and it was
+well that Mariquita had gone to bed. Gore was sitting up, and, though it
+was long past Sarella's usual hour, she had insisted on sitting up also.
+This was good-natured of her, for there was no pleasure to be
+anticipated from the interview with Don Joaquin, and she disliked any
+derangement of her habits. Gore had begged her to retire at her ordinary
+hour, but she had flatly refused.</p>
+
+<p>"I can do more with him than you can," she declared, quite truly,
+"though no one will be able to stop his being as savage as a bear. I'm
+sorry for Mariquita; she'll have a bad time to-morrow, and it won't end
+with to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile she took the trouble to have ready a good supper for Don
+Joaquin, and made rather a special toilette in which to help him to it.
+Sarella was not in the least afraid of him, and had no great dread of a
+row which concerned someone else. Don Joaquin was not, however,
+particularly mollified by the becoming dress, nor by finding his
+betrothed sitting up for him, as she was sitting up with Gore.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Mariquita?" he asked, as he sat down to eat.</p>
+
+<p>"In bed long ago. I hope you'll like that chicken; it's done in a
+special way we have, and the recipe's my patent. I haven't taught it to
+Mariquita."</p>
+
+<p>"Why aren't <i>you</i> in bed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I preferred waiting to see you safe at home," Sarella replied
+with an entrancing smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Was Mr. Gore anxious too?" Don Joaquin demanded sarcastically.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not a quarter of an hour later than my usual time for going to
+bed," Gore answered. "And I thought it better to see you; you would, I
+believe, have <i>expected</i> to see me."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well. You have done as you said?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes." Gore glanced at Sarella, and Don Joaquin told her that she had
+now better sit up no longer.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I</i> think I had," she told him; "I know all about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it all settled?" Don Joaquin asked, looking at Gore. "Have you fixed
+it up?"</p>
+
+<p>Gore found this abruptness and haste made his task very difficult.</p>
+
+<p>He had to consider how to form his reply.</p>
+
+<p>"He proposed to Mariquita," Sarella cut in, "but she refused him."</p>
+
+<p>"Refused him!" Don Joaquin almost shouted.</p>
+
+<p>"Unfortunately, it is so," Gore was beginning, but his host interrupted
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not choose she should refuse," he said angrily. "I will tell her
+so before you see her in the morning."</p>
+
+<p>Gore was angry himself, and rose from his seat.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said; "I will not agree to that. She knows her own mind, and it
+will not change. You must not persecute her on my account."</p>
+
+<p>"It is not on your account. I choose to have duty and obedience from my
+own daughter."</p>
+
+<p>"Joaquin," said Sarella (Gore had never before heard her call him by his
+Christian name), "it is no use taking it that way. Mariquita is not
+undutiful, and you must know it. But she will not marry Mr. Gore&mdash;or
+anybody."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course she will marry," cried the poor girl's father fiercely. "That
+is the duty of every girl."</p>
+
+<p>Sarella slightly smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Then many girls do not do their duty," she said, in her even,
+unimpassioned tones.</p>
+
+<p>Her elderly <i>fiancé</i> was about to burst into another explosion, but she
+would not let him.</p>
+
+<p>"Many Catholic girls," she reminded him, "remain unmarried."</p>
+
+<p>"To be nuns&mdash;that is different."</p>
+
+<p>"It is my belief," she observed in a detached manner, as if indulging in
+a mere surmise, "that Mariquita will be a nun."</p>
+
+<p>"Mariquita! Has she said so?" he demanded sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"Not to me," Sarella replied, quite unconcernedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Nor to me," Gore explained; "nevertheless, I believe it will be so."</p>
+
+<p>"That depends on <i>me</i>," the girl's father asserted with an unpleasant
+mixture of annoyance and obstinacy. "I intend her to marry."</p>
+
+<p>"Only a Protestant," said Sarella, with a shrewd understanding of Don
+Joaquin that surprised Gore, "would marry her if she believes she has a
+vocation to be a nun. I should think a Catholic man would be ashamed to
+do it. He would expect a judgment on himself and his children."</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin was as angry as ever, as savage as ever, but he was
+startled. Both his companions could see this. Gore was astonished at
+Sarella's speech, and at her acumen. He had wished to have this
+interview with Mariquita's father to himself, but already saw that
+Sarella knew how to conduct it better than he did. She had clearly been
+quite willing that "the old man" (as he disrespectfully called him in
+his own mind) should fly out and give way to his fiery temper at once;
+the more of it went off now, the less would remain for poor Mariquita to
+endure.</p>
+
+<p>"If I were a Catholic man," Sarella continued cooly, "I should think it
+<i>profane</i> to make a girl marry me who had given herself to be a nun. I
+expect the Lord would punish it." She paused meditatively, and then
+added, "and all who joined in pushing her to it. I know <i>I</i> wouldn't
+join. I think folks have enough of their own to answer for, without
+bringing judgments down on their heads for things like that. It won't
+get me to heaven to help in interfering between Mariquita and her way of
+getting there."</p>
+
+<p>All the while she spoke, Sarella seemed to be admiring, with her head
+turned on one side, the prettiness of her left wrist on which was a gold
+bangle, with a crystal heart dangling from it. Don Joaquin had given her
+the bangle, and himself admired the heart chiefly because it was crystal
+and not of diamonds.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it pretty?" she said, looking suddenly up and catching his eye
+watching her.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you hadn't cared much for it," he answered, greatly pleased.
+He had always known <i>she</i> would have preferred a smaller heart if
+crusted with diamonds.</p>
+
+<p>Gore longed to laugh. She astonished and puzzled him. Her cleverness was
+a revelation to him, and her good-nature, her subtlety, and her
+earnestness&mdash;for he knew she had been in earnest in what she said about
+not daring to interfere with other people's ways of getting to heaven.</p>
+
+<p>"That old man who instructs her," he thought, "must have taught her a
+lot."</p>
+
+<p>Of course, on his own account, he was no more afraid of Don Joaquin than
+she was. But he had been terribly afraid of the hard old man on
+Mariquita's, and he was deeply grateful to Sarella.</p>
+
+<p>"Sir," he said, "what she has said to you I do feel myself. I am a
+Catholic&mdash;and the dearest of my sisters is a nun. I should have hated
+and despised any man who had tried to spoil her life by snatching it to
+himself against her will. He would have to be a wicked fellow, and
+brutal, and impious. God's curse would lie on him. So it would on me if
+I did that hideous thing, though God knows to-day has brought me the
+great disappointment of my life. Life can never be for me what I have
+been hoping it might be. Never."</p>
+
+<p>Sarella, listening, and knowing that the two men were looking at each
+other, smiled at her bangle, and softly shook the dangling heart to make
+the crystal give as diamond-like a glitter as possible. Gore's life, she
+thought, would come all right. She had done her best valorously for
+Mariquita; women, in her theory, behooved to do their best for each
+other against masculine tyrrany ("bossishness," she called it), but all
+the time she was half-savage, herself, with the girl for not being
+willing to be happy in so obviously comfortable a way as offered. It
+seemed to her "wasteful" that so pretty a girl should go and be a nun;
+if she had been "homely" like Sister Aquinas it would have been
+different. But Sarella had learned from Sister Aquinas that these
+matters were above her, and was quite content to accept them without
+understanding them.</p>
+
+<p>"Ever since I came here," Gore was saying, "I have lived in a dream of
+what life would be&mdash;if I could join hers with mine. It was only a dream,
+and I had to awake."</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin did not understand his mind, but he was able now to see that
+the young man suffered, and had received a blow that, somehow, <i>would</i>
+change his life, and turn its course aside.</p>
+
+<p>"Anything," Gore said, in a very low, almost thankful tone, "is better
+than it would have been if I had changed my dream for a nightmare; it
+would have been that, if I had to think of myself as trying to pull her
+down, from her level to mine, of her as having been brought down. I
+meant to do her all possible good, all my life long. How can I wish to
+have done her the greatest harm? As it would have been if, out of fear
+or over-persuasion, she had been brought to call herself my wife who
+could be no man's wife."</p>
+
+<p>("<i>How</i> he loves her!" thought Sarella.)</p>
+
+<p>("I doubt it has wrecked him a bit," thought Don Joaquin.)</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXX.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Mariquita awoke early to see Sarella entering her room, and it surprised
+her, for her cousin was not fond of leaving her bed betimes.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm going back to bed again," Sarella explained. "We were up to all
+hours. Of course, your father made a rumpus."</p>
+
+<p>Mariquita heard this with less surprise than concern. It really grieved
+her to displease him.</p>
+
+<p>"He has very queer old-fashioned notions," Sarella remarked, settling
+herself comfortably on Mariquita's bed, "and thinks it's his business to
+arrange all your affairs for you. Besides, you know by this time that
+any plan he has been hatching he expects to hatch out, and not to help
+him seems to him most undutiful and shocking."</p>
+
+<p>"But I <i>can't</i> help him in this plan of his," Mariquita pleaded
+unhappily.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose not. Well, he flared out, and I was glad you were in bed.
+Gore behaved very well. It's a thousand pities you can't like him."</p>
+
+<p>"But I do like him. I like him better than any man I ever knew."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes! Better than the cowboys or the old chaplain at Loretto.
+<i>That's</i> no good."</p>
+
+<p>All this Sarella intended as medicinal; Mariquita, she thought, ought to
+have <i>some</i> of the chill of the late storm. She was not entitled to
+immediate and complete relief from suspense. But Sarella was beginning
+to feel a little chill about the legs herself, and did not care to risk
+a cold, so she abbreviated her disciplinary remarks a little.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm a good stepmother," she remarked complacently, "not at all like one
+in a novel. I took your part."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you!" Mariquita cried gratefully; "it was very, very kind of you."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't approve of men having things all their own way&mdash;whether fathers
+or husbands. He has been knocked under to too much. Yes, I took your
+part, and made him understand that if he kept the row up he'd have
+three of us against him."</p>
+
+<p>"What did you say?"</p>
+
+<p>"All sorts of things. Never mind. Perhaps Mr. Gore will tell you&mdash;only
+he won't. He said a lot of things too. We made your father think he
+would be wicked if he went on bullying you."</p>
+
+<p>Of course, Mariquita did not understand how this had been effected.</p>
+
+<p>"He would not do anything wicked," she said; "he is a very good man."</p>
+
+<p>"He'd be a very good mule," Sarella observed coolly, considerably
+scandalizing Mariquita.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd have found him a pretty unpleasant one, if Gore and I had left
+you to manage him yourself." Sarella added, entirely unmoved by her
+cousin's shocked look. "We managed him. He won't beat you now. But you'd
+better keep out of his way as much as you can for a bit. If I were you,
+I'd have a bad headache and stop in bed."</p>
+
+<p>"But I haven't a headache. I never do have headaches."</p>
+
+<p>Sarella made a queer face, and sighed, then laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Anyway, you're not to be made to marry Mr. Gore," she said.</p>
+
+<p>Mariquita looked enormously relieved, and began to express her grateful
+sense of Sarella's good offices.</p>
+
+<p>"For that matter," Sarella cut in, "neither will Mr. Gore be made to
+marry <i>you</i>&mdash;so if you change your mind it will be no good. He thinks it
+would be wicked to marry you."</p>
+
+<p>Mariquita perfectly understood that Sarella was trying to make her
+sorry, and only gave a cheerful little laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Then," she said, "I shall certainly not ask him. It would be quite
+useless to ask him to do anything wicked."</p>
+
+<p>"The fact is," Sarella told her, "that you and he ought to be put in a
+glass case&mdash;two glass cases, you'd both of you be quite shocked at the
+idea of being in <i>one</i>&mdash;and labelled. It's a good thing you're unique.
+If other lovers were like you two, there'd be no marriages."</p>
+
+<p>She got up, and prepared to return to her own room.</p>
+
+<p>"Hulloa!" she said, "there's the auto. Your father's going off
+somewhere, and you can get up. Probably he is taking Gore away."</p>
+
+<p>"Is Mr. Gore going away?"</p>
+
+<p>"He'll have to. There's no one here for him to marry except Ginger; but
+no doubt you want him to become a monk."</p>
+
+<p>"A monk! He hasn't the least idea of such a thing."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dear!" sighed Sarella, instantly changing the sigh into a laugh.
+"How funny you people are who never condescend to see a joke."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't know," Mariquita confessed meekly, "that you had made one."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Don Joaquin was not yet recovered from his annoyance. As Sarella had
+perceived, he could not easily condone the defective conduct of those
+who, owing him obedience, refused to carry out a plan that he had long
+been meditating. But he had been frightened by the picture she had
+suggested of Divine judgment, and wondered if the hitches that had
+occurred in the issue of the dispensation for his marriage had been a
+hint of them&mdash;a threatening of what would happen if he opposed the
+Heavenly Will concerning his daughter's vocation. It was chiefly because
+the plan of her marriage had been deliberately adopted by himself, that
+he was reluctant to abandon it. Her own plan of becoming a nun would, he
+gradually came to see, suit him quite as well. And presently he became
+aware that, financially, it would suit him even better. If she "entered
+Religion," he would have to give her a dowry; but not, he imagined, a
+large one, five thousand dollars or so, he guessed. Whereas, if she
+married Gore, he would be expected to give her much more. Besides, her
+marriage would very likely involve subsequent gifts and expenditure. It
+would all come out of what he wished to save for the beloved son of whom
+he was always thinking. As a nun, too, Mariquita would be largely
+engaged in praying for the soul of her mother, and for his own soul and
+Sarella's and her brother's.</p>
+
+<p>By the time he and Mariquita met he had grasped all these advantages,
+and, though aloof and disapproving in his manner, he did not attack her.</p>
+
+<p>As it pleased him to admire in Sarella a delightful shrewdness in
+affairs, he gave her credit for favoring Mariquita's plan because it
+would leave more money for her own children. In this he paid her an
+undeserved compliment, for Sarella did not know in the least that
+Mariquita would receive less of her father's money if she became a nun
+than if she married Mr. Gore. She had not thought of it, being much of
+opinion that Gore would ask for nothing in the way of dowry and that Don
+Joaquin would give nothing without much asking.</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin was considerably taken aback to learn that Mariquita had
+formed no definite plans yet as to her "entering Religion." He had
+promptly decided that, of course, she would go back to Loretto as a nun,
+and he was proportionally surprised to find that she had no such idea.
+This surprise he expressed, almost in dudgeon, to Sarella. He appeared
+to consider himself quite ill-used by such vagueness; if young women
+wanted to be nuns it behooved them to know exactly where they meant to
+go, and what religious work they felt called to undertake.</p>
+
+<p>"If I were you," Sarella told him, after some hasty consideration, "I
+would let her go to Loretto&mdash;on a visit. You will find she makes up her
+mind quicker there&mdash;with nothing to distract her. Sister Aquinas talks
+of Retreats&mdash;Mariquita could make one."</p>
+
+<p>"Who's to do the work here while she's away?" grumbled Don Joaquin.</p>
+
+<p>"It will have to be done when she's gone for good. We may just as well
+think it out."</p>
+
+<p>Sarella was quite resolved that she would never be the slave Mariquita
+had been, and did not mind having the struggle, if there was to be one,
+now.</p>
+
+<p>"Whether Mariquita married or became a nun," she went on, "she would be
+gone from here. Her place would have to be supplied&mdash;more than supplied,
+for a young wife like me could not do nearly so much work. I should have
+things to do an unmarried girl has not, and be unfit for much work. I am
+sure you understand that. Sister Aquinas knows two sisters, very
+respectable and trustworthy, steady, and not too young. I meant to speak
+to you about them. They would suit us as well. They will not separate,
+and for that matter, we can't do with less than two."</p>
+
+<p>Sarella's great object was to open the matter; she intended to succeed
+but did not count on instant success, or success without a struggle. Don
+Joaquin had to be familiarized with a scheme some time before he would
+adopt it. He rebelled at first and for that rebellion she punished him.</p>
+
+<p>"Mariquita's position was wrong," she told him boldly. "It tended to
+make her unlike other girls and give her unusual ideas. She was tied by
+the leg here, by too much work, and her only rest or recreation was
+solitary thinking. If she had been taken about and met her equals she
+would have been like other girls, I expect. She was a slave and sought
+her freedom in the skies."</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin enjoyed this philippic very little; perhaps he only partly
+understood it, but he did understand that Sarella thought Mariquita had
+been put upon and did not intend being put upon herself. He would have
+been much less influenced if he had thought of Sarella as specially
+devoted to his daughter or blindly fond of her, but he had always
+believed that there was but a cool sympathy between the two girls, and
+that Sarella would have found fault with Mariquita quite willingly if
+there had been fault to find.</p>
+
+<p>"You have taken up the cudgels," he said sourly, "very strongly for
+Mariquita of late."</p>
+
+<p>"As time goes on I naturally feel able to speak more plainly than I
+could when I first came here. I was only your guest. It is different 'of
+late.' And I am 'taking up the cudgels' for myself more than for
+Mariquita."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I quite see that," he retorted with a savage grin.</p>
+
+<p>Sarella determined to hit back, and she was by no means restrained by
+scruples as to "hitting below the belt."</p>
+
+<p>"Fortunately for her," she said, "Mariquita has splendid health, and
+work did not kill her. She has the strength of a horse. Her mother did
+not leave it to her. I have always heard in the family that Aunt
+Margaret was delicate, physically unfit for hard work. Men do not notice
+those things. She died too young, and might have lived much longer if
+she had not overtaxed her strength. She ought to have been prevented
+from doing so much work. You were not too poor to have allowed her
+plenty of help&mdash;and you are much better off now."</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin almost jumped with horror; he had really adored his wife,
+and now he was being flatly and relentlessly accused of having perhaps
+shortened her life by lack of consideration for her. And was it true? He
+could not help remembering much to support the accusation. She had been
+a woman of feeble health and feeble temper; her singular beauty of
+feature and coloring had been in every eye but Joaquin's own, marred by
+an expression of discontent and complaining, though she had been too
+much in awe of her masterful husband to set out her grievances to him;
+he guessed now that she must have written grumbling letters to her
+relations far away in the East. The man was no monster of cruelty; he
+was merely stingy and money-loving, hard-natured, and without
+imagination. Possessed of iron health himself, he had never conceived
+that the sort of work his Indian mother had submissively performed could
+be beyond the strength of his wife. It was true that he was much richer
+now than he had been when he married, and Sarella had herself
+accustomed him to the idea of greater expenditure, however dexterously
+he might have done his best to neutralize those spendings. He was more
+obstinately set upon marrying her than ever, because he had for a long
+time now decided upon the marriage; he was nervously afraid of her
+drawing back if he didn't yield to her wishes, the utterance of which he
+took to be a sort of ultimatum.</p>
+
+<p>"Are these two women Catholics?" he demanded, feeling sure that Sister
+Aquinas would only recommend such; "I will not have Protestant servants
+in the house."</p>
+
+<p>"They are excellent Catholics," Sarella assured him, "educated in the
+convent."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I will consider the plan. You can ask Sister Aquinas about the
+conditions&mdash;wages, and so forth."</p>
+
+<p>"What a pity," thought Sarella, when the interview had ended, "that
+Mariquita never knew how to manage him."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>There was no pomp of leave-taking about Mariquita's departure for
+Loretto. She was only going on a visit, and would return.</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever you decide upon," Sarella insisted, "you must come back for
+your father's wedding."</p>
+
+<p>Mariquita promised, and went away, her father driving her all the way to
+Loretto in the auto. Her departure did not move him much, though he
+would have been better pleased, after all, if she were going away to a
+husband's house. Sarella, watching them disappear in the distance, felt
+it more than the stoical old half-breed.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall miss her," she said to herself; "I like her better than I
+thought I should. She's as straight as an arrow, and as true as gold. I
+suppose this watch <i>is</i> gold; he'd never dare to give me <i>rolled</i>
+gold.... Only nine o'clock. It will be a long day, and I shall miss her
+all the time. Quiet as she is, it will make a lot of difference. No one
+has such a nice way of laughing, when she does laugh. I wonder if she
+guesses how little her father cares? <i>He</i> won't miss her much. Some men
+care never a pin for a woman unless they want to marry her. <i>He</i> has no
+use for the others. I expect it makes them good husbands, though. Poor
+Mariquita! I think I should have hated him if I had been her. It never
+occurred to her; at first I thought she must be an A-Number-One
+hypocrite, she seemed to think him so exactly all that he ought to be to
+her. Then I thought she must be stupid&mdash;I soon saw she was as sincere as
+a baby. But she's not stupid either. She's just Mariquita; she really
+does see only the things she ought to see, and it's queer. I never saw
+anyone else that way. I thought at first she <i>must</i> be jealous of me,
+the old man put her so completely on one side, and made such a lot of
+me. Any other girl would have been. I soon saw she wasn't; it never
+entered her head that he might leave me money that ought to be hers&mdash;it
+would have entered mine, I know. But 'she never thought of that,' as she
+used to say about everything." Oddly enough, it was at this particular
+recollection that a certain dewy brightness (that became them well)
+glistened in Sarella's pretty eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," she thought, "I'm glad I can call to mind that I did the best I
+could for her. It made me feel just sick to think of the old man
+brow-beating and bullying her. I saw a big hulking fellow beat his
+little girl once, and I felt just the same, only I could <i>do</i> nothing
+then but scream. I was a child myself, and I did scream, and I bit him.
+I'm glad I did bite him, though I was spanked for it. I suppose I'll
+have to confess biting him, though I don't call it a sin. What on earth
+can Mariquita confess? At first her goodness put my back up. But I wish
+she was back. It never occurs to her that she's good. I soon found that
+out. And she thinks everyone else as good as gold. She thinks all these
+cowboys good, and she does almost make them want to be. It was funny
+that she didn't dislike me. (<i>I</i> should have if I'd been in her place.)
+When she kissed me good-bye and said 'Sarella, we'll never forget each
+other,' it meant more than pounds of candy-talk from another girl.
+Forget her! Not I. Will Gore? He will never think any other girl her
+equal. Mrs. Gore may make up her mind to that. Perhaps he'll marry
+someone not half so good as himself and rather like it. Pfush! It feels
+lonesome now. I often used to get into my own room to get out of
+Mariquita's way, and stretch the legs of my mind over a novel. I wish
+she was here now...."</p>
+
+<p>And Sarella did not speedily give over missing Mariquita. She was a girl
+who on principle preferred men's society to that of other women, but in
+practice had considerable need of female companionship. She liked to
+make men admire her, but she did not much care to be admired by the
+cowboys, and took it for granted that they already admired her as much
+as befitted their inferior position. She had always been too shrewd to
+try and make other women admire her, but she liked talking to them about
+clothes, which no man understands; and, though Mariquita had been
+careless about her own sumptuous affairs, she had been a wonderfully
+appreciative (or long-suffering) listener when Sarella talked about
+hers.</p>
+
+<p>"And after all," Sarella confessed, "she had taste. My style would not
+have suited her. That plain style of her own was best for her."</p>
+
+<p>When Don Joaquin returned from Denver he seemed unlike himself, almost
+subdued. He had been much impressed by the great convent and its large
+community; the nuns had made much of him, and of Mariquita. They spoke
+in a way that at last put it into his head that he had under-valued her;
+there is nothing for awaking our appreciation of our own near relations
+like the sudden perception that other people think greatly of them.
+Gore's respect and admiration for his daughter had not done much, for he
+had only looked upon it as the blind predilection of a young man in love
+with a beautiful girl. Several of the nuns, including their Reverend
+Mother, had spoken to him apart, in Mariquita's absence, not
+immediately on his and her arrival, but on the evening of the following
+day; on the morrow he was to depart on his return to the range, and in
+these conversations the Sisters let him plainly see that they regarded
+the girl as peculiarly graced by God, and of rarely high and noble
+character.</p>
+
+<p>He asked the Superior if she thought Mariquita would wish to stay with
+them and become one of themselves.</p>
+
+<p>"No," was the answer. "She is a born Contemplative. Every nun must be a
+contemplative in some degree, but I use the word in its common sense. I
+mean that I believe she will find herself called to an Order of pure
+Contemplatives. She will make a Retreat here, and very likely will be
+shown during it what is God's will for her."</p>
+
+<p>It surprised the kind and warm-hearted Religious that he did not inquire
+whether that life were not very hard. But she took charitable refuge in
+the supposition that he knew so little about one Order or another as to
+be free from the dread that his child might have a life of great
+austerity before her.</p>
+
+<p>"You may be sure," she said, in case later on any such affectionate
+misgiving should trouble him, "that she will be happy. Unseen by you or
+us she will do great things for God and His children. You shall share in
+it by giving her to Him when He calls. She is your only child ("As yet,"
+thought Don Joaquin, even now more concerned for her brother, than for
+her) and God will reward your generosity. He never lets Himself be
+outstripped in that. For the gift of Abraham's son He blest his whole
+race."</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin knew very little about Abraham, but he understood that all
+the Jews since his time had been notably successful in finance.</p>
+
+<p>It did not cause him any particular emotion to leave his daughter. She
+was being left where she liked to be, and would doubtless be at home
+among these holy women who seemed to think so much of her, and to be so
+fond of her. He had forgiven her for wishing to be a nun and thought
+highly of himself for having given his permission.</p>
+
+<p>The nuns thought he concealed his feelings to spare Mariquita's, and
+praised God for the unselfishness of parents.</p>
+
+<p>Mariquita had never expected tenderness from him, but she thought him a
+good man and a good father, and was very grateful for his concession in
+abandoning his insistence on her marriage, and sanctioning her choice of
+her own way of life. And he did embrace her on parting, and bade God
+bless her, reminding her that it would be her duty to pray much for
+himself and Sarella. At the range he found a letter, which had arrived
+late on the day on which he had left home with her, and this letter he
+took as a proof that she had prayed to some purpose. The dispensation
+was granted and he could now fix his marriage for any date he chose.</p>
+
+<p>"Did she send me her love?" Sarella asked, jealous of being at all
+forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, twice; and when I kissed her she said, 'Kiss Sarella for me.' Also
+she sent you a letter."</p>
+
+<p>Sarella received very few letters and liked getting them. She was rather
+curious to see what sort of letter Mariquita would write, and made up
+her mind it would be "nunnish and poky."</p>
+
+<p>Whether "nunnish" or no, it was not "poky," but pleasant, very cheerful
+and bright, and very affectionate. It contained little jokish allusions
+to home matters, and former confidential talks, and one passage (much
+valued by Sarella) concerning a gown, retracting a former opinion and
+substituting another backed by most valid reasons. "If those speckled
+hens go on eating each other's feathers," said the letter, "you'll have
+to kill them and eat them. Once they start they never give it up, and it
+puts the idea in the others' heads. Feathers don't suit everybody, but
+fowls look wicked without them. I hope poor old Jack doesn't miss me;
+give him and Ginger my love, and ask him to forgive me for not marrying
+Mr. Gore&mdash;he gave me a terrible lecture about it, and Ginger said, 'Quit
+it, Dad! I <i>knew</i> she wouldn't. I know sweethearts when I see
+them&mdash;though I never did see one&mdash;not of my own.' I expect Larry Burke
+will show her one soon, don't you, Sarella? It will do very well; Larry
+will have the looks and Ginger will have the sense, and teach him all
+he needs. He has such a good heart he can get on without <i>too</i> much
+sense...."</p>
+
+<p>Sarella liked her letter, and decided that Mariquita was not lost,
+though removed.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>"I suppose," Don Joaquin remarked in a disengaged manner, "that, after
+all your preparations, we can fix the day for our wedding any time now."</p>
+
+<p>Sarella was not in the least taken in by his elaborate air of having
+been able, for <i>his</i> part, to have fixed a day long ago.</p>
+
+<p>It was, however, part of her system to fall in with people's whimsies
+when nothing was to be gained by opposing or exposing them.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes," she agreed, most amiably. "It will take three Sundays to
+publish the banns&mdash;any day after that. Meanwhile I should be received.
+Sister Aquinas says I am ready. As soon as we have settled the exact
+time, we must let Mariquita know, and you can, when the time comes, go
+over and fetch her home."</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin consented, and Sarella thought she would go and deliver
+Mariquita's message to Jack and his daughter. She found them together
+and began by saying, smilingly:</p>
+
+<p>"I expect you have known for a long while that there was a marriage in
+the air?"</p>
+
+<p>Old Jack had not learned to like her, and Ginger still disliked her
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe," she said perversely, for, of course, both she and her
+father understood perfectly, "that Miss Mariquita is going to be
+married. She's not that way."</p>
+
+<p>This was a discouraging opening, for it seemed to cast a sort of slur on
+young women who <i>were</i> likely to be married.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Gore's never asked again!" cried Jack.</p>
+
+<p>"Dad, don't you be silly," Ginger suggested; "everyone knows Miss
+Mariquita wants to be a nun."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Sarella with impregnable amiability, "but we can't all be
+nuns. Miss Mariquita doesn't seem to think <i>you</i> likely to be one. She
+sent me back by her father such a nice letter. She sends Jack and you
+her love, and, though she doesn't send Larry Burke her love, thinking of
+you evidently makes her think of him."</p>
+
+<p>Ginger visibly relaxed, and her father stared appallingly with his one
+eye.</p>
+
+<p>"Good Lord!" quoth he in more sincere than flattering astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he is good," Ginger observed cooly, "and there's worse folk than
+Larry Burke, or me either."</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Mariquita thinks it would be such a good thing for him," Sarella
+reported. "So must any one."</p>
+
+<p>Ginger felt that this, after her unpleasantness to the young lady who
+brought the message, was handsome.</p>
+
+<p>"He might do better," she declared, "and he might do worse."</p>
+
+<p>"Has he <i>said</i> anything?" her father inquired with undisguised
+incredulity.</p>
+
+<p>"What he's said is nothing," Ginger calmly replied. "It's what I think
+as matters. He's no Cressote, but he's got a bit&mdash;or ought, if he hasn't
+spent it. I'd keep his money together for him, and he'd soon find it a
+saving. And I could do with him&mdash;for if his head's soft so's his heart.
+I think, Dad," she concluded, willing "to take it out" of her father
+for his unflattering incredulity, "you may as well, when Miss Sarella's
+gone, tell him to step round. I'll soon fix it."</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't do that," Jack expostulated.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" Ginger demanded with fell determination.</p>
+
+<p>"I really don't see why you shouldn't," Sarella protested, much amused
+though not betraying it. "It's all for his good," she added seriously.</p>
+
+<p>Jack was shaken, but not yet disposed to obedience.</p>
+
+<p>"Larry," Sarella urged, "won't be so much surprised as you think. Miss
+Mariquita, you see, wants him and Ginger to make a match of it&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But does <i>he</i>?" Jack pleaded, moved by Mariquita's opinion, but not so
+sure it would reduce Larry to subjection.</p>
+
+<p>"Tut!" said Ginger impatiently. "What's <i>he</i> to do with it? If he don't
+know what's best for him, I do. So does Miss Sarella. So does Miss
+Mariquita."</p>
+
+<p>"And," Sarella added, "you may be sure Miss Mariquita would never have
+said a word about it if she hadn't felt pretty sure it was to come off.
+She's never been one to be planning marriages. Why, Larry must have made
+it as plain as a pikestaff that he was ready, or she would never have
+guessed it."</p>
+
+<p>The weight of this argument left Jack defenseless.</p>
+
+<p>"Hadn't you better wait, Ginger," he attempted to argue with shallow
+subtlety; "he's like enough to step round after supper. Then I'd clear,
+and you could say when you liked."</p>
+
+<p>"No," Ginger decided, "I'm tired of him stepping round after supper,
+just to chatter. He'd be prepared if you told him I'd said he was to
+come. He'd know something was wanted. In fact, you'd better tell him."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell him? Me? Tell him what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just that I'd made up my mind to say 'yes' if he'd a question to ask
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"Why," cried Jack, aghast, "he'd get on his horse and scoot."</p>
+
+<p>"Not far," Ginger opined, entirely unmoved. "He'd ride back. He's not
+pluck enough to be such a coward as to scoot for good. Just you try."</p>
+
+<p>The two women drove the battered old fellow off, Ginger laughed and
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't men helpless?"</p>
+
+<p>Sarella was full of admiration of her prowess.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, <i>you're</i> not," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Not me. But, Dad won't find Larry as much surprised as he thinks. It's
+been in the silly chap's head (or where folks keep their ideas that have
+no head) this three weeks. <i>I</i> saw, though he never said a lot&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Overpowered by curiosity, Sarella asked boldly what he did say.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, just rubbish," Ginger answered laughing; "you're as clean as a
+tablet of scented soap, anyway," says he, first. Then he said, "Ginger,
+I've known pretty girls with hair not near so nice as yours&mdash;not a
+quarter so much of it." Another time he asked if I kept a tooth-brush.
+"I thought so," says he, quite loving; "your teeth's as white as nuts
+with the brown skin off, and as regular as a row of tombstones in an
+undertaker's window. I never <i>did</i> mind freckles as true as I stand
+here ..." and stuff like that. But the strongest ever he said was,
+"Pastry! What's pastry when a woman don't know how to make it. I'd as
+soon eat second-hand toast. Yours, Ginger, is like what the angels make,
+<i>I</i> should say, at Thanksgiving for the little angels.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Did he, really!" said Sarella, feeling quite sure that Larry would not
+"scoot."</p>
+
+<p>"I told him," Ginger explained calmly, that if he didn't quit such
+senseless talk <i>he'd</i> never get any more of my pastry. He looked so down
+that I gave him a slice of pumpkin pie when he was leaving. "The
+pastry," says I, "will mind you of me, and the pumpkin of yourself." But
+he got his own back, for he just grinned and said, "Yes, I'll think o'
+them together, Ginger, for the pie and the pumpkin belongs together,
+don't they?"</p>
+
+<p>Sarella laughed and expressed her belief that after all Jack's embassy
+was rather superfluous.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe so. But I knew he'd hate it, and he deserved it for seeming so
+unbelieving. If my mother had been <i>lovely</i> I'd have been born plain;
+it's not <i>him</i> as should think me too ugly for any young fellow to
+fancy. I daresay I shouldn't have decided to take Larry if Miss
+Mariquita hadn't sent that message. I was afraid she'd think me a fool.
+Here's Larry coming round the corner, looking as if he'd been stealing
+his mother's sugar."</p>
+
+<p>"He's only thinking of your pastry," said Sarella. "I'll slip off. May I
+be told when it's all settled?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, certainly, Miss Sarella, and I'm sure I wish all that's best to
+the Boss and yourself. It's not everyone could manage him, but <i>you</i>
+will. Poor Miss Mariquita never could. She was too good."</p>
+
+<p>With these mixed compliments Sarella had to content herself.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXIV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>When she answered Mariquita's letter she was to report not only the
+judicial end of the plumiverous and specked hens, but the betrothal of
+Larry Burke and Ginger. "Nothing," she wrote, "but his dread of your
+displeasure could have overcome his dread of what the other cowboys
+would say on hearing of his proposing. After all, he has more sense than
+some sharp fellows who follow at last the advice they know is worth
+least...."</p>
+
+<p>In her next letter Sarella said:</p>
+
+<p>"I am to be made a Catholic on Monday next; so when you're saying your
+prayers (and that's all day) you can be thinking of me. Perhaps I gave
+in to it first to satisfy your father; but even then I thought 'if it
+makes me a bit more like Mariquita he'll get a better bargain in me.' I
+shan't ever be at all like you, but I shall be of the same Religion as
+you, and I know by this time that it will do me good. It's all a bit
+too big for me to understand, but I like what I do understand, and
+Sister Aquinas says I shall grow into it. Clothes, she says, fit better
+when they're worn a bit, and sit easier. She says, 'It has changed you,
+my dear child, already; you are gentler, and kinder.' She said another
+thing, 'Your husband has been a Catholic all his life, but you will
+gradually make him a better one. He is a very sensible man, and he can't
+see you learning to be a Catholic and not want to learn what it really
+means himself. He is too honest.' She likes your father a lot, and never
+bothers him. 'I know,' she said, 'you will not bother him either. Some
+earnest Catholics do bother their men-folks terribly about religious
+things&mdash;and for all the good they seem to do, might be only half as
+earnest and have a better effect.' I make my First Communion the day
+after I'm received. And, Mariquita, my dear, we are to be married that
+day week. Your father will fetch you home, and mind, <i>mind</i>, you come. I
+should never forgive you if you didn't. Shall I have Ginger for a
+bridesmaid? I know some brides do choose ugly ones to make themselves
+look better. The cowboys (this is a dead secret told me by Ginger) have
+subscribed to give us a wedding-present. I hope it won't be one of those
+clocks like black-marble monuments with a round gilt eye in it. I expect
+the cowboys laugh at both these marriages. But they rather like them.
+They make a lark, and they never do dislike anything they can laugh at.
+They certainly all look twice as amiably at me when we meet about the
+place since they <i>knew</i> I was going to be married. And Ginger finds them
+so friendly and pleasant I expect she thinks she might, if she had
+liked, have married the lot. But that's different. I daresay you notice
+that I write more cheerfully, now it is settled. Yes, I do. I like him a
+great deal more than at first. It began when he gave in about what you
+wanted. I really believe I shall make him happy&mdash;and I fancy I think of
+that more&mdash;I mean less of his making me happy. And, Mariquita, it <i>is</i>
+good of me to have wanted you to be let alone to be a nun if you thought
+it right, because, oh dear, how I should like you to be living near or
+at the next range! Before I got to know you, it was just the opposite. I
+hoped you'd get a husband of your own and <i>quit</i>; I did. I thought you'd
+hate your father marrying again, and (if you stayed on here) would be
+looking disapproval all day long, and perhaps I thought you would not be
+best pleased at not getting all his money when he died. (I think when
+people go to Confession they ought to confess things like that. Do
+they?) Oh, Mariquita, you will be missed. But I'd rather miss you, and
+know you were being what you felt yourself called away to, than think I
+had helped to have you interfered with...."</p>
+
+<p>Mariquita, reading Sarella's letter, felt something new in her life,
+something strangely moving, that filled her eyes and heart with
+something also new&mdash;happy tears. The free gift of tenderness came newly
+to her; and, it may be, she had least of all looked for it from Sarella.</p>
+
+<p>"'Do people,' she quoted to herself from Sarella <i>herself</i>, 'confess
+these things?' I will, anyway."</p>
+
+<p>It hurt her to think that she who so loved justice and charity, must
+have been both uncharitable and unjust.</p>
+
+<p>But can we agree? Had not Sarella's unforeseen tenderness been her own
+gift to her? Had Sarella brought tenderness with her from the East?</p>
+
+<p>At the stranger's first coming Mariquita had not judged but <i>felt</i> her,
+and her feeling (of which she herself knew very little) had been
+instinctively correct while it lasted.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Of course Mariquita kept her promise of being present at her father's
+marriage. It had never occurred to her that she could be absent; it was
+a duty of respect that she owed to him, and a duty of fellow-womanhood
+that she owed to Sarella.</p>
+
+<p>It amused her a little to hear that a certain Mrs. Kane was to be
+present, in a sort of maternal quality, and that Mr. Kane was to give
+the bride away as a sort of official father. Mr. Kane might have seen
+Sarella a dozen times&mdash;in the parlor of the convent, which she was much
+given to frequent. Mrs. Kane had, so far as Mariquita was aware, never
+seen her at all&mdash;except at Mass.</p>
+
+<p>They were Kentuckians who had moved west some twelve years earlier than
+Sarella herself, and, though they had not made a fortune, were
+sufficiently well off to be rather leading members of the congregation.
+Mrs. Kane's most outstanding characteristic was a genius for organizing
+bazaars, on a scale of ever-increasing importance; the first had been
+for the purchase of a harmonium, the last had been to raise funds for a
+new wing to the Convent; all her friends had prophesied failure for the
+first; no one had dared predict anything but dazzling success for the
+last. Mr. Kane was not less remarkable for his phenomenal success in the
+matter of whist-drives&mdash;and raffles. He would raffle the nose off your
+face if you would let him, and hand over an astonishing sum to the
+church when he had done it, with the most exquisite satisfaction that
+the proceeding was not strictly legal.</p>
+
+<p>Both the Kanes were extremely amusing, and no one could decide which was
+the more good-natured of the two. Of week-day afternoons Mrs. Kane was
+quite sumptuously attired, Mr. Kane liked to be rather shabby even on
+Sundays at Mass, which caused him to be generally reported somewhat more
+affluent than he really was. He had always been supposed to be "about
+fifty," whereas Mrs. Kane had, ever since her arrival, spoken of herself
+as "on the sensible side of thirty."</p>
+
+<p>At Sarella's wedding Mrs. Kane's magnificence deeply impressed the
+cowboys; and Mr. Kane's elaborate paternity towards the bride, whom he
+only knew by her dress, would have deceived if it had been possible the
+very elect; they were not precisely that and it did not deceive, though
+it hugely delighted them.</p>
+
+<p>"I swear he's <i>crying</i>!" whispered Pete Rugger to Larry Burke. "He cried
+just like that in the play when Mrs. Hooger ran away with her own
+husband that represented the hero."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Larry, "a man can't help his feelings."</p>
+
+<p>He was secretly wondering if Mr. Kane would give away Ginger&mdash;he would
+do it so much better than Jack.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kane affected no tears. She had the air of serenely parting with a
+daughter, for her own good, to an excellent, wealthy husband whom she
+had found for her, and of being ready to do as much for the rest of her
+many daughters&mdash;Mr. and Mrs. Kane were childless.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps this attitude on her part suited better with her resplendent
+costume than it would have suited her husband's black attire&mdash;which he
+kept for funerals.</p>
+
+<p>Little was lost on the cowboys, and they did not fail to note that the
+gray which of recent years had been invading the "Boss's" hair had
+disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>"In the distance he don't look a lot older than Gore," Pete Rugger
+declared to his neighbor.</p>
+
+<p>Gore supported Don Joaquin as "best" or groomsman.</p>
+
+<p>It was significant that on Mariquita's appearance no spoken comment was
+made by any of the cowboys, though to each of them she was the most
+absorbing figure. Her father had fetched her from Loretto three days
+before the wedding, and at the Convent had been introduced to a
+learned-looking but agreeable ecclesiastic who was a rector of a college
+for lay youths.</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin, much interested, had plied the reverend pundit with
+inquiries concerning this seat of learning, not forgetting particular
+inquisition as to the terms.</p>
+
+<p>On their conclusion he took notes in writing of all the replies and
+declared that it sounded exactly what he would choose for his own son.</p>
+
+<p>"I would like," he said, with a simplicity that rather touched the
+rector, "that my lad should grow up with more education than I ever
+had."</p>
+
+<p>"Your son," surmised the rector, "would be younger than his sister?"</p>
+
+<p>"He would," Don Joaquin admitted, without condescending upon
+particulars.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXVI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>When Gore next saw Mariquita in public she herself was dressed as a
+bride. It was a little more than a year later. After her return to
+Loretto she remained there about three weeks, at the end of which she
+went home to the range for a week. Her parents (as Don Joaquin insisted
+on describing himself and Sarella) had returned from their wedding trip,
+and she could see that the marriage was a success. The two new servants
+were installed, and Ginger was now Mrs. Lawrence Burke and absent on
+<i>her</i> wedding journey.</p>
+
+<p>Mariquita's father made more of her than of old, and inwardly resolved
+to make up to "her brother" for any shortcomings there might have been
+in her case.</p>
+
+<p>Sarella was unfeignedly glad to have her at home, and looked forward
+sadly to her final departure. Of one thing she was resolved&mdash;that
+Mariquita should be taken all the way to her "Carmel" in California by
+both "her parents." And, of course, she got her own way.</p>
+
+<p>The extreme beauty of the Convent and its surroundings, the glory of the
+climate, the brilliance of its light, the splendor of the blue and gold
+of sky and hills, half blinded Sarella to the rigor of the life
+Mariquita was entering&mdash;till the moment of actual farewell came. Then
+her tears fell, far more plentifully than Mr. Kane's at her own wedding.</p>
+
+<p>Still she admitted that the nuns were as cheerful as the sky, and
+wondered if she had ever heard more happy laughter than theirs as they
+sat on the floor, with Mariquita in their midst, behind the grille in
+the "speak-room." As a postulant Mariquita did not wear the habit, but
+only a sort of cloak over her own dress; her glorious hair was not yet
+cut off.</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin did not see the nuns, as did Sarella, with the curtains of
+the grille drawn back. It seemed to him that the big spikes of the
+grille were turned the wrong way, for he could not imagine anyone
+desiring to get forcibly <i>in</i>. He watched everything, fully content to
+take all for granted as the regulation and proper thing, without
+particularly understanding any of it. It gave him considerable
+satisfaction to hear that Saint Theresa was a Spaniard, and he thought
+it sensible of Mariquita to join a Spanish order. He had no misgivings
+as to her finding the life hard&mdash;he did not know in the least what the
+life was, and made no inquisition; he had a general idea that women did
+not feel fastings and so forth. He would have felt it very much himself
+if he had had to rise with the dawn and go fasting till midday, instead
+of beginning the day with a huge meal of meat.</p>
+
+<p>The old life at the range, as it had been when Sarella first came, was
+never resumed. She was determined that its complete isolation should be
+changed, and she changed it with wonderful rapidity and success. The
+friendly and kind-hearted Kanes helped her a great deal. They had
+insisted, at the wedding itself, that the bride and bridegroom should
+pay them a very early visit, after their return from their
+wedding-journey. It was paid immediately on their getting back from
+California, and it lasted several days. During those days their host and
+hostess took care that they should meet all the leading Catholics of the
+place, to whom Sarella made herself pleasant, administering to them (in
+her husband's disconcerted presence) pressing invitations to come out to
+the range: though they all had autos it was not to be expected that they
+would come so far for a cup of tea, and they came for a night, and often
+for two or three nights. Naturally the Kanes came first and they spoke
+almost with solemnity (as near solemnity as either could attain) of
+social duty. It was an obligation on all Catholics to hang together, and
+hanging together obviously implied frequent mutual hospitalities. Don
+Joaquin had found that the practice of his religion did imply
+obligations and duties never realized before, and he was a little
+confused as to their relative strictness. On the whole, he succumbed to
+what Sarella intended, with a compliance that might have surprised
+Mariquita had she been there to see. Some of the cowboys were of the
+opinion that the old man was breaking. He was only being (not
+immediately) broken in. A man of little over fifty, of iron
+constitution, does not "break," however old he may appear to
+five-and-twenty or thirty. The sign that appeared most ominous to these
+young men was that "the Boss" betrayed symptoms of less rigid
+stinginess; there was nothing really alarming about the symptoms. Such
+as they were they were due, not so much to any decay in the patient's
+constitution, as to a little awakening of conscience referable, such as
+it was, to the late-begun practices of confession. Old Jack was made
+foreman, at an increase of pay by no means dazzling, but quite
+satisfactory to himself, who had not expected any such promotion. Larry
+and Ginger settled, about two miles from the homestead, in a small house
+which they were permitted by Don Joaquin to build. Two of the cowboys
+found themselves wives whom they had first seen in church at Sarella's
+wedding; these young ladies, it appeared, had severally resolved that
+under no circumstances would they marry any but Catholics, and their
+lovers accepted the position, largely on the ground that a religion good
+enough for Miss Mariquita would be good enough for them.</p>
+
+<p>"Too good," grimly observed one of their comrades who was not then
+engaged to marry a Catholic.</p>
+
+<p>Don Joaquin allowed the two who were married to have a little place
+built for themselves on the range. And as the brides were each
+plentifully provided with sisters it seems likely that soon Don Joaquin
+will have quite a numerous tenantry. It also appears probable that a
+priest will presently be resident at the range, for one has already
+entered into correspondence with Don Joaquin on the subject. Having
+recently recovered from a "chest trouble," he has been advised that the
+air of the high prairies holds out the best promise of continued life
+and avoidance of tuberculosis. There is another scheme afoot of which,
+perhaps, Don Joaquin as yet knows nothing. It began in the active mind
+of Sister Aquinas, and its present stage consists of innumerable
+prayers on her part that she may be able to establish out on the range
+a little hospital, served by nuns, for the resuscitation of patients
+threatened with consumption. She sees in the invalid priest a chaplain
+plainly provided as an answer to prayer; Mr. and Mrs. Kane, her
+confidants, see in the scheme immense occasion for unbridled bazaars and
+whist drives. All friends of Mr. Kane meet him on their guard, uncertain
+which of their possessions he may have it in his eye to raffle. Even as
+I write, I hear that another answer to the dear nun's prayers looms into
+sight. A widowed sister of her own, wealthy, childless and of profuse
+generosity, writes to her, and the burden of her song is that she would
+not mind (her chest having always been weak) going to the proposed
+sanatorium herself, at all events for a few years, and bringing with her
+Doctor Malone: Dr. Malone is of unparalleled genius in his profession,
+but tuberculous, and it is transparently plain that his kind and
+affluent friend wishes to finance him and remove him to an
+"anti-tuberculous air."</p>
+
+<p>It seems to me certain that Sister Aquinas's prayers will very soon be
+answered, and the sanatorium be a fact. She has, I know, mentally
+christened it already, "Mariquita" is to be its name.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXVII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Mariquita's profession took place fourteen months after her father's
+second marriage. Her brother was already an accomplished fact; he was,
+indeed, six weeks old and present (not alone) on the occasion. He was
+startlingly like his father, a circumstance not adverse to his future
+comeliness as a man, but which made him a little portentous as a baby.
+Don Joaquin on the day of his birth wrote to the rector of the college
+whom he had met at Loretto with many additional inquiries. Mariquita
+first beheld her brother when, fortunately, his father and her own was
+not present, for she laughed terribly at the great little black creature
+with eyes and nose at present much too big. He looked about fifty and
+had all the solemnity of that distant period of his life.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Isn't</i> he a thorough Spaniard?" Sarella demanded, pretending to pout
+discontentedly. But Mariquita saw very clearly that she was as proud of
+her baby as Don Joaquin himself. Since his birth Sarella's letters had
+been full of him, and she thought of <i>his</i> clothes now. She had
+persuaded her husband, as a thank-offering for his son, to give a
+considerable piece of ground, in a beautiful situation, not a mile from
+the homestead, as the site of the future Church, Convent, and
+Sanatorium.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The beautiful and bright chapel of the Carmelite convent was free of
+people; two prie-dieus, side by side, had been placed at the entrance of
+the church. Towards these Mariquita, dressed as a bride, walked, leaning
+on her father's arm. She had always possessed the rare natural gift of
+walking beautifully. No one in the church had ever seen a bride more
+beautiful, more radiant, or more distinguished by unlearned grace and
+dignity.</p>
+
+<p>Among the congregation, but nearest to the two prie-dieus, knelt
+Sarella and Mr. Gore.</p>
+
+<p>Behind their grille the nuns were singing the ancient Latin hymn of
+invocation to the Holy Ghost.</p>
+
+<p>Presently the Archbishop in noble words set out the Church's doctrine
+and attitude concerning "Holy Religion," especially in reference to the
+Orders called Contemplative, for no Catholic Order of religion can be
+anything but contemplative, in its own degree and fashion. He dwelt upon
+the thing called Vocation, and the vocation of every human soul to
+heaven, each by its own road of service, love, and obedience; then upon
+the more exceptional vocation of some, whereby God calls them to come to
+Him by roads special and less thronged by travellers to the Golden Gate;
+pointing out that the Church, unwavering guardian of Christian liberty,
+in every age insisted on the freedom of such souls to accept that Divine
+summons as the rest are free to go to Him by the ways of His more
+ordinary and usual Providence. He spoke of the Church's prudence in this
+as in all else, and of the courses enjoined by her to enable a sound
+judgment to be made as to the reality of such exceptional vocation; and
+so of postulancy, novitiate, and profession.</p>
+
+<p>His words ended, the "bride" and her father rose from their knees and
+after (on his part the usual genuflection) and on hers a slow and
+profound reverence, they turned and walked down the church as they had
+come, she leaning upon his arm. After them the whole congregation moved
+out of the chapel, and went behind them to the high wooden gates behind
+which was the large garden of the "enclosure." Grouped before these
+gates all waited, listening to the nuns slowly advancing towards them
+from the other side, out of sight, but audible, for they were singing as
+they came. Slowly the heavy gates opened inwards, and the Carmelites
+could be seen. In front stood one carrying a great wooden crucifix. The
+faces of none of them could be seen, for their long black veils hung,
+before and behind, down to the level of their knees, leaving only a
+little of the brown habit visible.</p>
+
+<p>Mariquita embraced her father, and Sarella spoke a low word to Gore,
+who stood on one side of Sarella, went forward with a low reverence
+towards the Crucifix, kissed its feet, and then turned; with a profound
+curtesy she greeted those who had gathered to see her entrance into Holy
+Religion, and took her farewell of "the world," the gates closed slowly,
+and among her Sisters she went back to the chapel.</p>
+
+<p>The congregation returned thither also. Many were softly weeping; poor
+Sarella was crying bitterly. Her husband was not unmoved, but his grave
+dignity was not broken by tears. Gore could not have spoken, but there
+was no occasion for speech.</p>
+
+<p>Behind the nun's grille in the chapel the little community was gathered,
+Mariquita among them, no longer in her bride's dress, but in the brown
+habit without scapular or leathern belt.</p>
+
+<p>The Archbishop advanced close to the grille and put to her many
+questions. What did she ask? Profession in the order of holy religion of
+Mount Carmel. Was this of her own free desire? Yes. Had any coerced or
+urged her to it? No one. Did she believe that God Himself had called her
+to it? Yes. And many other questions.</p>
+
+<p>Then the Archbishop blessed the scapular, and it was put upon her by her
+Sisters, as in the case of the belt. So with each article of her nun's
+dress, sandals and veil.</p>
+
+<p>Thereafter, upon ashes, she lay upon the ground covered by a Pall, and
+De Profundis was sung.</p>
+
+<p>So the solemn rite proceeded to its end. Afterwards the new Religious
+sat in the parlor of the grille, or "speak-room," and the witnesses kept
+it full for a long time, as in succession they went to talk to her where
+she sat behind the grille.</p>
+
+<p>The last of all was Gore. He only went in as the last of the groups came
+out.</p>
+
+<p>"I was afraid you might not come," Mariquita told him. "Thank you for
+coming. If you had not come I should have been afraid that you felt it
+sad. There is nothing sad about it, is there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed nothing."</p>
+
+<p>There was something in her voice that told him she was gayer than of
+old, happy she had always been. Though she smiled radiantly she did not
+laugh as she said:</p>
+
+<p>"I know the <i>ceremonies</i> are rather harrowing to the lookers-on. (I
+heard someone sob&mdash;dear Sarella, I'm afraid.) But not to <i>us</i>. One is
+not sad because one has been allowed to do the one thing one wanted to
+do? Is one?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not when it is a great, good thing like this."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, how kind you are! I always told you you were the kindest person I
+had ever met. Yes the <i>thing</i> is great and good&mdash;only you must help me
+to do it in God's own way, in the way He wishes it done. You will not
+get tired of helping, by your prayers for me, will you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I never shall."</p>
+
+<p>Presently she said, not laughing now either, but with a ripple like the
+laughter of running water in her voice, "You can't think how I like it
+all, how amusing some of it is! One has to do 'manual labor'&mdash;washing
+pots and pans, and cleaning floors; I believe it is supposed to be a
+little humiliating, and meant to keep us humble. And you know how used
+I am to it. I'm afraid of its making me conceited&mdash;I do it so much
+better than the Sisters who never did anything like that at home. Mother
+Prioress is always afraid, too, that I shan't eat enough, and that I
+shall say too many prayers. I fell into a pond we have in our garden,
+and she was terrified, thinking I must be drowned; no one could drown in
+it without standing on her head. I was trying to get a water-lily, so I
+fell in and came out frightfully muddy and smelly, too.... You must be
+kind to Sarella; she is so good, and has been so good to me. I shall
+never forget what you and she did for me. Write to her if you go away,
+and tell her all about yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"What there is to tell."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, there will be lots. You are not such a bad letter-writer as
+that...."</p>
+
+<p>So they talked, the small, trivial, kindly talk that belongs to
+friendship, and showed him that Mariquita was more Mariquita than ever,
+now she was Sister Consuelo. Her father liked the Spanish name, without
+greatly realizing its reference to Our Lady of Good Counsel.</p>
+
+
+<h3>THE END</h3>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mariquita, by John Ayscough
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mariquita, by John Ayscough
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+Title: Mariquita
+       A Novel
+
+Author: John Ayscough
+
+Release Date: April 22, 2012 [EBook #39498]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARIQUITA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
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+
+
+                                 MARIQUITA
+
+                                  A Novel
+
+                              BY JOHN AYSCOUGH
+
+
+    NEW YORK, CINCINNATI, CHICAGO
+    BENZIGER BROTHERS
+
+    COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY BENZIGER BROTHERS
+
+    Printed in the United States of America
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+TO
+
+SENORITA MARIQUITA GUTIERREZ
+
+
+SENORITA,
+
+It is, indeed, kind of you to condone, by your acceptance of the
+dedication of this small book, the theft of your name, perpetrated
+without your knowledge, in its title. And in thanking you for that
+acceptance I seize another opportunity of apologizing for that theft.
+
+I need not tell you that in drawing Mariquita's portrait I have not been
+guilty of the further liberty of attempting your own, since we have
+never met, except on paper, and you belong to that numerous party of my
+friends known to me only by welcome and kind letters. But I hope there
+may be a nearer likelihood of my meeting you than there now can be of my
+seeing your namesake.
+
+That you and some others may like her I earnestly trust: if not it must
+be the fault of my portrait, drawn perhaps with less skill than
+respectful affection.
+
+JOHN AYSCOUGH.
+
+
+
+
+MARIQUITA
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+A whole state, as big as England and Wales, and then half as big again,
+tilting smoothly upward towards, but never reaching, the Great Divide:
+the tilt so gradual that miles of land seem level; a vast sun-swept,
+breeze-swept upland always high above the level of the far, far-off sea,
+here in the western skirts of the state a mile above it. Its sky-scape
+always equal to its landscape, and dominant--as the sky can never be
+imagined in shut lands of close valleys, where trees are forever at war
+with the air and with the light.
+
+Here light and life seeming twin and inseparable: and the wind itself
+but the breathing of the light. What is called, by the foolish, a
+featureless country, that is with huge, fine features, not to be sought
+for but insistent, regnant, everywhere: space, tangible and palpable,
+height inevitably perceptible and recognizable in all the unviolated
+light, in the winds' smash, and the sun's, in the dancing sense of
+freedom: yet that dancing not frivolous, but gladly solemn.
+
+As to _little_ features they are slurred (to the slight glance) in the
+vast unity: but look for them, and they are myriad. The riverbanks hold
+them, between prairie-lip and water. The prairie-waves hold them. Life
+is innumerably present, though to the hasty sight it seems primarily and
+distinctly absent. There are myriads of God's little live preachers,
+doing each, from untold ages to untold ages, the unnoted things set them
+by Him to do, as their big brothers the sun and the wind, the rain and
+the soil do.
+
+Of the greater beasts fewer but plenty--fox, and timber-wolf, and
+coyote, and still to-day an antelope here and there.
+
+Of men few. Their dwellings parted by wide distances. Their voices
+scarce heard where no dwelling is at hand. But the dwellings, being
+solitary and rare, singularly home-stamped.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+Mariquita came out from the homestead, where there was nobody, and stood
+at its verge (where the prairie began abruptly) where there was nobody.
+She was twenty years old and had lived five of them here on the prairie,
+since her mother died, and she had come home to be her father's daughter
+and housekeeper, and all the servant he had. She was hardly taller now,
+and more slim. Her father did not know she was beautiful--at first he
+had been too much engaged in remembering her mother, who had been very
+blonde and fair, not at all like her. Her own skin was dark; and her
+rich hair was dark; her grave, soft, deep eyes were dark, though
+hazel-dark, not black-dark: whereas her mother's hair had been
+sunny-golden, and her eyes bright (rather shallow) blue, and her skin
+all white and rose.
+
+Her mother had taught school, up in Cheyenne, in Wyoming, and had been
+of a New England family of Puritans. Her father's people had come, long
+ago, from Spain, and he himself had been born near the desert in New
+Mexico: his mother may have been Indian--but a Catholic, anyway.
+
+So, no doubt, was Jose: though he had little occasion to remember it. It
+was over fifty miles to the nearest church and he had not heard Mass for
+years. He had married his Protestant wife without any dispensation, and
+a judge had married them.
+
+Nevertheless when the child came, he had made the mother understand she
+must be of his Church, and had baptized her himself. When Mariquita was
+ten years old he sent her to the Loretto nuns, out on the heights beyond
+Denver, where she had been confirmed, and made her first Communion, and
+many subsequent Communions.
+
+For five years now she had had to "hear Mass her own way." That is to
+say, she went out upon the prairie, and, in the shade of a tree-clump,
+took her lonely place, crossed herself at the threshold of the shadow,
+and genuflected towards where she believed her old school was, with its
+chapel, and its Tabernacle. Then, out of her book she followed the
+Ordinary of the Mass, projecting herself in mind and fancy into that
+worshipping company, picturing priest and nuns and school-fellows. At
+the _Sanctus_ she rang a sheep-bell, and deepened all her Intention. At
+the Elevation she rang it again, in double triplet, though she could
+elevate only her own solitary soul. At first she had easily pictured all
+her school-fellows in their remembered places--they were all grown up
+and gone away home now. The old priest she had known was dead, as the
+nuns had sent her word, and she had to picture _a_ priest, unknown,
+featureless, instead of him. The nuns' faces had somewhat dimmed in
+distinctness too. But she could picture the large group still. At the
+Communion she always made a Spiritual Communion of her own--that was why
+she always "heard her Mass" early, so as to be fasting.
+
+Once or twice, at long intervals, she had been followed by one of the
+cowboys: but the first one had seen her face as she knelt, and gone
+away, noiselessly, with a shy, red reverence. Her father had seen the
+second making obliquely towards her tree-clump, had overtaken him and
+inquired grimly if he would like a leathering. "When Mariquita's at
+church," said Jose, "let her be. She's for none of us then."
+
+And they let her be: and her tree-clump became known as Mariquita's
+Church by all the cowboys.
+
+One by one they fell in love with her (her father grimly conscious, but
+unremarking) and one by one they found nothing come of it. Whether he
+would have objected _had_ anything come of it he did not say, though
+several had tried to guess.
+
+To her he never spoke of it, any more than to them: he hardly spoke to
+her of anything except the work--which she did carefully, as if
+carelessly. If she had neglected it, or done it badly, he would have
+rebuked her: that, he considered, was parental duty: as she needed no
+rebuke he said nothing; his ideas of paternal duty were bounded by
+paternal correction and a certain cool watchfulness. His watchfulness
+was not intrusive: he left her chiefly to herself, perceiving her to
+require no guidance. In all her life he never had occasion to complain
+that anything she did was "out of place"--his notion of the severest
+expression of disapproval a father could be called upon to utter.
+
+It was, in his opinion, to be taken for granted that a parent was
+entitled to the affection of his child, and that the child was entitled
+to the affection of her father. He neither displayed his affection nor
+wished Mariquita to display hers. Nor was there in him any sensible
+feeling of love for the girl. Her mother he had loved, and it was a
+relief to him that his daughter was wholly unlike her. It would have
+vexed him had there been any challenging likeness--would have resented
+it as a tacit claim, like a rivalry.
+
+Joaquin was lonelier than Mariquita. He did not like being called "Don
+Joaquin"; he preferred being known by his surname, as "Mr. Xeres." One
+of the cowboys, a very ignorant lad from the East, had supposed
+"Wah-Keen" to be a Chinese name, and confided his idea to the others.
+Don Joaquin had overheard their laughter and been enraged by its cause
+when he had learned it.
+
+He had not married till he was a little over thirty, being already well
+off by then, and he was therefore now past fifty on this afternoon when
+Mariquita came out and stood all alone where the homestead as it were
+rejoined the prairie. At first her long gaze, used to the great
+distances, was turned westward (and south a little) towards where, miles
+upon miles out of sight, lay the Mile High City, and Loretto, and the
+Convent, and all that made her one stock of memories.
+
+The prairie was as empty to such a gaze as so much ocean.
+
+But the sun-stare dazzled her, and she turned eastward; half a mile from
+her, that way, lay the river, showing nothing at this distance: its
+water, not filling at this season a fifth of the space between banks was
+out of sight: the low scrub within its banks was out of sight. Even its
+lips, of precisely even level on either side, were not discernible. But
+where she knew the further lip was, she saw two riders, a man and a
+woman. A moment after she caught sight of them they disappeared--had
+ridden down into the river-bed. The trail had guided them, and they
+could miss neither the way nor the ford.
+
+Nevertheless she walked towards where they were--though her father might
+possibly have thought her doing so out of place.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Up over the sandy river-bed came the two strangers, and Mariquita stood
+awaiting them.
+
+The woman might be thirty, and was, she perceived (to whom a saddle was
+easier than a chair) unused to riding. She was a pretty woman, with a
+sort of foolish amiability of manner that might mean nothing. The man
+was younger--perhaps by three years, and rode as if he had always known
+how to do it, but without being saddle-bred, without living chiefly on
+horseback.
+
+His companion was much aware of his being handsome, but Mariquita did
+not think of that. She, however, liked him immediately--much better than
+she liked the lady. The lady was not, in fact, quite a lady; but the
+young man was a gentleman; and perhaps Mariquita had never known one.
+
+"Is this," inquired the blonde lady--pointing, though inaccurately, as
+if to indicate Mariquita's home, "where Mr. Xeres lives, please?"
+
+She pronounced the X like the x's in Artaxerxes.
+
+"Certainly. He is my father."
+
+"Then your mother is my Aunt Margaret," said the lady in the smart
+clothes that looked so queer on an equestrian.
+
+"My mother unfortunately is dead," Mariquita informed her, with a
+simplicity that made the wide-open blue eyes open wider still, and
+caused their owner to decide that the girl was "awfully Spanish."
+
+Miss Sarah Jackson assumed (with admirable readiness) an expression of
+pathos.
+
+"How very sad! I do apologize," she murmured, as if the decease of her
+aunt were partly her fault.
+
+The young man was amused--not for the first time--by his
+fellow-traveller: but he did not show it.
+
+"You couldn't help it," said Mariquita.
+
+("How very Spanish!" thought her cousin.)
+
+"Of course you did not know," the girl added, "or you would not have
+said anything to hurt me. And my mother's death happened five years
+ago."
+
+"Not _really_!" cried the deceased lady's niece. "How wholly
+unexpected!"
+
+"It wasn't very sudden," Mariquita explained. "She was ill for three
+months."
+
+"My father was quite unaware of it--entirely so. He died, in fact, just
+about that time. And Aunt Margaret and he were (so unfortunately!)
+hardly on terms. Personally I always (though a child) had the strongest
+affection for Aunt Margaret. I took her part about her marriage. Papa's
+_own_ second marriage struck me as less defensible."
+
+"_My_ father only married once," said Mariquita; "he is a widower."
+
+"Oh, quite so! I wish mine had remained so. My stepmother--but we all
+have our faults, no doubt. We did _not_ live agreeably after her third
+marriage--" (Mariquita was getting giddy, and so, perhaps, was Miss
+Jackson's fellow-traveller.)
+
+"I could not, in fact, live," that lady serenely continued, with a smile
+of lingering sweetness, "and finally we differed completely. (Not
+noisily, on my part, nor roughly but irrevocably.) Hence my resolve to
+turn to Aunt Margaret, and my presence here--blood _is_ thicker than
+water, when you come to think of it."
+
+"I met Miss Jackson at ----," her fellow-traveller explained, "and we
+made acquaintance--"
+
+"Introduced by Mrs. Plosher," Miss Jackson put in again with singular
+sweetness. "Mrs. Plosher's boarding-house was recommended to me by two
+ministers. Mr. Gore was likewise her guest, and coming, as she was
+aware, to your father's."
+
+Don Joaquin, besides the regular cowboys, had from time to time taken a
+sort of pupil or apprentice, who paid instead of being paid. Mariquita
+had not been informed that this Mr. Gore was expected.
+
+"So," Mr. Gore added, "I begged Miss Jackson to use one of my horses,
+and I have been her escort."
+
+"So coincidental!" observed that lady, shaking her head slightly.
+"Though really--now I find my aunt no longer presiding here--I
+_really_----"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Don Joaquin expressed no surprise at Mr. Gore's arrival, and no rapture
+at that of Miss Jackson. But he appeared to take it for granted both
+would remain--as they did.
+
+He saw more of the young man than of the young woman, which seemed to
+Mariquita to account for his preferring the latter. _She_ had to see
+more of the lady. Miss Jackson was undeniably pretty, and instantly
+recognized as such by the cowboys: but she "kept her distance," and
+largely ignored their presence--a fact not unobserved by Don Joaquin,
+who inwardly commended her prudence. Of Mr. Gore she took more notice,
+as was natural, owing to their previous acquaintance. She spoke of him,
+however, to her host, as a lad, and hinted that at her age, lads were
+tedious; while frequent in allusion to a certain Eastern friend of hers
+(Mr. Bluck, a man of large means and great capacity) whose married
+daughter was her closest acquaintance.
+
+"Carolina was older than me at school," she would admit, "but she was
+more to my taste than those of my own age. Maturity wins me. Youth is so
+raw!"
+
+"What you call underdone," suggested Don Joaquin, who had talked English
+for forty years, and translated it still, in his mind, into Spanish.
+
+"Just that," Sarah agreed. "You grasp me."
+
+He didn't then, though he would sooner or later, thought the cowboys.
+
+Miss Jackson, then, ignored the cowboys, and gave all the time she could
+spare from herself to Mariquita. When not with Mariquita she was sewing,
+being an indefatigable dressmaker. She called it her "studies."
+
+"It is essential (out here in the wilderness) that I should not neglect
+my studies, and run to seed," she would say, as she smilingly retreated
+into her bedroom, where there were no books.
+
+Mariquita would not have been sorry had she "studied" more. Sarah did
+not fit into her old habits of life, and when they were together
+Mariquita felt lonelier than she had ever done before. Indoors she did
+not find the young woman so incongruous--but when they were out on the
+prairie together the elder girl seemed somehow altogether impossible to
+reconcile with it.
+
+"One might sketch," Miss Jackson would observe. "One _ought_ to keep up
+one's sketching: I feel it to be a duty--don't you?"
+
+"No. I can't sketch. It can't be a duty in my case."
+
+"Ah, but in _mine_! I _know_ I ought. But there's no feature." And she
+slowly waved her parasol round the horizon as though defying a "feature"
+to supervene from any point of the compass.
+
+Though she despised her present neighborhood, Sarah never hinted at any
+intention of leaving it: and it became apparent that her host would not
+have liked her to go away. That her presence was a great thing for
+Mariquita it suited him to assume, but he saw no necessity for
+discussing the matter, nor ascertaining what might in fact be his
+daughter's opinion.
+
+"I think," he said instead, "it will be better we call your cousin
+'Sarella'. It is her name Sarah and Ella. 'Sarella' sounds more
+fitting."
+
+So he and Mariquita thenceforth called her "Sarella."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+Don Joaquin never thought much of Robert Gore; he failed, from the
+first, to "take to him." It had not delighted him that "Sarella" should
+arrive under his escort, though how she could have made her way up from
+Maxwell without him, he did not trouble to discuss with himself. At
+first he had thought it almost inevitable that the young man should make
+those services of his a claim to special intimacy with the lady to whom
+he had accidentally been useful. As it became apparent that Gore made no
+such claim, and was not peculiarly inclined to intimacy with his late
+fellow-traveller, Don Joaquin was half disposed to take umbrage, as
+though the young man were in a manner slighting Miss Jackson--his own
+wife's niece.
+
+As there were only two women about the place, indifference to one of
+them (and that one, in Don Joaquin's opinion, by far the more
+attractive) might be accounted for by some special inclination towards
+the other. Was Gore equally indifferent to Mariquita?
+
+Now, at present, Mariquita's father was not ready to approve any
+advances from the stranger in that direction. He did not feel he knew
+enough about him. That he was sufficiently well off, he thought
+probable; but in that matter he must have certainty. And besides, he
+thought Gore was sure to be a Protestant. Now he had married a
+Protestant himself: and that his wife had been taken from him in her
+youth had been, he had silently decided, Heaven's retribution. Besides,
+a girl was different. A man might do things she might not. _He_ had
+consulted his own will and pleasure only; but Mariquita was not
+therefore free to consult hers. A Catholic girl should give herself only
+to a Catholic man.
+
+That Mariquita and Gore saw little of each other he was pretty sure, but
+it was not possible they should see nothing. And it soon became his
+opinion that, without much personal intercourse, they were interested in
+each other.
+
+Mariquita listened (without often looking at him) when Gore talked, in a
+manner he had never yet observed in her. Gore's extreme deference
+towards the girl, his singular and almost aloof courtesy was, the old
+man conceived, not only breeding and good manners, but the sign of some
+special way in which she had impressed him; as if he had, at sight,
+perceived in her something unrevealed to her father himself. In this, as
+in most things, Don Joaquin was correct in his surmise. He was shrewd in
+surmise to the point almost of cleverness, though by no means an
+infallible judge of character. It did not, however, occur to him that
+the young stranger was right in this fancied perception, that in
+Mariquita there was something higher and finer than anything divined by
+her father, who had never gone beyond admitting that, so far, he had
+perceived in her nothing out of place.
+
+If anything out of place should now appear he would speak; meanwhile he
+remained, as his habit was, silent and watchful; not rendered more
+appreciative of his daughter by the stranger's appreciation, and not
+inclined by that appreciation more favorably to the stranger himself.
+
+That Gore was not warmly welcomed by the cowboys neither surprised nor
+troubled him. There were no quarrels, and that was enough. He did not
+expect them to be delighted by the advent of a foreigner in a position
+not identical with their own. What they did for pay, he paid for being
+taught to do--that was the theory, though in fact Gore did not seem to
+need much teaching. Some, of course, he did need: prairie-lore he could
+not know, however practised he might be as a mere horseman. Don Joaquin
+was chiefly a horse-raiser and dealer, though he dealt also in cattle
+and even in sheep. By this time he had the repute of being wealthy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+It was true that the actual intercourse between Mariquita and her
+father's apprentice or pupil was much less frequent or close than might
+be imagined by anyone strange to the way of life of which they formed
+two units.
+
+At meals they sat at the same table, but during the greater part of
+every day he was out upon the range, and she at home, within the
+homestead, or near it. Yet it was also true that between them there was
+something not existing between either and any other person: a friendship
+mostly silent, an interest not the less real or strong because of the
+silence. To Gore she was a study, of profounder interest than any book
+he knew. To make a counter-study of him would have been alien from
+Mariquita's nature and character; but his presence, which she did not
+ponder, or consider, as he did hers, brought something into her life.
+Perhaps it chiefly made her less lonely by revealing to her how lonely
+she had been. Of his beauty she never thought--never till the end. Of
+hers he thought much less as he became more and more absorbed in
+herself--though its fineness was always more and more clearly perceived
+by him.
+
+On that first afternoon, when he had first seen her, it had instantly
+struck him as possessing a quality of rarity, elusive and never to be
+defined. Miss Jackson's almost gorgeous prettiness, her brilliant
+coloring, her attractive shapeliness, had been hopelessly and finally
+vulgarized by the contrast--as the two young women stood on the level
+lip of the river-course in the unsparing, unflattering light.
+
+That Miss Jackson promptly decided that Mariquita was stupid, he had
+seen plainly; and he had not had the consolation of knowing that she was
+stupid herself. She was, he knew, wise enough in her generation, and by
+no means vacant of will or purpose. But she was, he saw, stupid in
+thinking her young hostess so. Slow, in some senses, Mariquita might be;
+not swift of impression, though tenacious of impression received, nor
+willing to be quick in jumping to shrewd (unflattering) conclusion, yet
+likely to stick hard to an even harsh conclusion once formed.
+
+These, however, were slight matters. What was not slight was the sense
+she gave him of nobility: her simplicity itself noble, her complete
+acquiescence in her own complete ignorance of experience--her innate,
+unargued conviction of the little consequence of much, often highly
+desired, experience.
+
+Of the world she knew nothing, socially, geographically even. Of women
+her knowledge was (as soon he discovered) a mere memory, a memory of a
+group of nuns--for her other companions at the Convent had been
+children. Of men she knew only her father and his cowboys. And no one,
+he perceived, knew her.
+
+But Gore did not believe her mind vacant. That rare quality could not
+have been in her beauty if it had been empty. Yet--there was something
+greater than her mind behind her face. The shape of that perception had
+entered instantly into his own mind; and the perception grew and
+deepened daily, with every time he was in her presence, with every
+recollection of her in absence.
+
+Her mind might be a garden unsown. But behind her face was the light of
+a lamp not waiting to be lit, but already lighted (he surmised) at the
+first coming of conscious existence, and burning steadily ever since.
+Whose hand had lighted it he did not know yet, though he knew that the
+lamp, shining behind her face, her mere beauty, was her soul. Her father
+was not mistaken in his notion that the young man regarded the girl to
+whom he addressed so little of direct speech, with a veneration that
+disconcerted Don Joaquin and was condemned by him as out of place. Not
+that he, of course, found fault with _respect_: absence of that he would
+grimly have resented; but a _culte_, like Gore's, a reverence literally
+devout, seemed to the old half-Indian Latin, high-falutin, unreal: and
+Don Joaquin abhorred unrealities.
+
+Probably the young man condemned the old as hide-bound in obtuseness of
+perception in reference to his daughter. As a jewel of gold in a swine's
+snout she may well have seemed to him. If so, some inkling of the fact
+would surely penetrate the old horse-raiser's inner, taciturn, but
+acutely watchful consciousness. His hide was by no means too thick for
+that. And, if so again, that perception would not enhance his
+appreciation of the critic.
+
+Elderly fathers are not universally more flattered by an exalted
+valuation of their daughters than by an admiring estimation of
+themselves.
+
+To himself, indeed, Gore was perfectly respectful. And he had to admit
+that the stranger learned his work well and did it well--better than the
+cowboys whom Don Joaquin was not given to indulge in neglect or
+slackness.
+
+He had a notion that the cowboys considered Gore too respectable--as to
+which their master held his judgment in suspense. In a possible
+son-in-law respectability, unless quite suspiciously excessive, would
+not be much "out of place"--not that Don Joaquin admitted more than the
+bare possibility, till he had fuller certainty as to the stranger's
+circumstances and antecedents, what he called his "conditions." Given
+satisfactory conditions, Mariquita's father began to be conscious that
+Gore as a possible son-in-law might simplify a certain course of his
+own.
+
+For Sarella continued steadily to commend herself to his ideas. He held
+her to be beautiful in the extreme, and her prudence he secretly
+acclaimed as admirable. That she was penniless he was quite aware, and
+he had a constant, sincere affection for money; but, unless penniless,
+such a lovely creature could hardly have been found on the prairie, or
+be expected to remain there; an elderly rich husband, he considered,
+would have much more hold on a young and lovely wife if she _were_
+penniless.
+
+That the young woman had expensive tastes he did not suppose, and he had
+great and not ungrounded confidence in his own power of repression of
+any taste not to his mind, should any supervene.
+
+Don Joaquin had two reasons for surveying with conditional approval the
+idea of marrying Sarella--when he should have made up his mind, which he
+had not yet done. One was to please himself: the other was in order that
+he might have a son. Mariquita's sex had always been against her. Before
+her arrival he had decided that his child must be a boy, and her being a
+girl was out of place. He disliked making money for some other man's
+wife.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+Jack did not like Sarella, and so it was fortunate for that young person
+that Jack's opinion was of no sort of consequence. He had been longer on
+the range than anyone there except Don Joaquin, and he did much that
+would, if he had been a different sort of man, have entitled him to
+consider himself foreman. But he received smaller wages than anyone and
+never dreamt of being foreman. He was believed never to have had any
+other name but Jack, and was known never to have had but one suit of
+clothes, and his face and hands were much shabbier than his clothes,
+owing to a calendar of personal accidents. "That happened," he would
+say, "in the year the red bull horned my eye out," or "I mind--'twas in
+the Jenoorey that my leg got smashed thro' Black Peter rollin' on
+me...." He had been struck in the jaw by a splinter from a tree that had
+itself been struck by lightning, and the scar he called his "June
+mark." A missing finger of his right hand he called his Xmas mark
+because it was on Christmas Day that the gun burst which shot it off.
+These, and many other scars and blemishes, would have marred the beauty
+of an Antinoues, and Jack had always been ugly.
+
+But, shabby as he was, he was marvellously clean, and Mariquita was very
+fond of him. His crooked body held a straight heart, loyal and kind, and
+a child's mind could not be cleaner. No human being suspected that Jack
+hated his master, whom he served faithfully and with stingily rewarded
+toil: and he hated him not because he was stingy to himself, but because
+Jack adored Mariquita, and accused her father of indifference to her. He
+was angry with him for leaving her alone to do all the work, and angry
+because nothing was ever done for her, and no thought taken of her.
+
+When Sarella and Gore came, Jack hoped that the young man would marry
+Mariquita and take her away--though _he_ would be left desolate. Thus
+Mariquita would be happy--and her father be punished, for Jack clearly
+perceived that Don Joaquin did not care for Gore, and he did _not_
+perceive that Mariquita's departure might be convenient to her father.
+But Jack could not see that Gore himself did much to carry out that
+marriage scheme. That the young man set a far higher value on Mariquita
+than her father had ever done, Jack did promptly understand; but he
+could perceive no advances and watched him with impatience.
+
+As for Sarella, Jack was jealous of her importance: jealous that the old
+man made more of his wife's niece than of his own daughter; jealous that
+she had much less to do, and specially jealous that she had much smarter
+clothes. Jack could not see Sarella's beauty; had he possessed a
+looking-glass it might have been supposed to have dislocated his eye for
+beauty, but he possessed none--and he thought Mariquita as beautiful as
+the dawn on the prairie.
+
+To do her justice, Sarella was civil to the battered old fellow, but he
+didn't want her civility, and was ungrateful for it. Yet her civility
+was to prove useful. Jack lived in a shed at the end of the stables,
+where he ate and slept, and mended his clothes sitting up in bed, and
+wearing (then only) a large pair of spectacles, though half a pair would
+have been enough. He cooked his own food, though Mariquita would have
+cooked it for him if he would have let her.
+
+Sarella loved good eating, and on her coming it irritated her to see so
+much excellent food "made so little of." Presently she gave specimens of
+her own superior science, and Don Joaquin approved, as did the cowboys.
+
+"Jack," she said to him one day, "do you ever eat anything but stew from
+year's end to year's end?"
+
+"I eats bread, too, and likewise corn porridge," Jack replied coldly.
+
+"I could tell you how to make more of your meat--I should think you'd
+sicken of stew everlastingly."
+
+"There's worse than stew," he suggested.
+
+"_I_ don't know what's worse, then," the young lady retorted, wrinkling
+her very pretty nose.
+
+"None. That's worse," said Jack, triumphantly.
+
+"It seems to me," Sarella observed thoughtfully, "as if you're growing a
+bit oldish to do for yourself, and have no one to do anything for you.
+An elderly man wants a woman to keep him comfortable."
+
+Jack snorted, but Sarella, undefeated, proceeded to put the case of his
+being ill. Who would nurse him?
+
+"Ill! I've too much to do for sech idleness. The Boss'd stare if I laid
+out to get ill."
+
+"Illness," Sarella remarked piously, "comes from Above, and may come any
+day. Haven't you anyone belonging to you, Jack? No sister, no niece; you
+never were married, I suppose, so I don't mention a daughter."
+
+"I _was_ married, though," Jack explained, much delighted, "and had a
+daughter, too."
+
+"You quite surprise me!" cried Sarella, "quite!"
+
+"She didn't marry me for my looks, my wife didn't," chuckled Jack. "Nor
+yet for my money."
+
+"Out of esteem?" suggested Sarella.
+
+"Can't say, I'm sure. I never heerd her mention it. Anyway, it didn't
+last--"
+
+"The esteem?"
+
+"No. The firm. She died--when Ginger was born. Since which I have
+remained a bachelord."
+
+"By Ginger you mean your daughter?"
+
+"That's what they called her. Her aunt took her, and _she_ took the
+smallpox. But she didn't die of it. She's alive now."
+
+"Married, I daresay?"
+
+"No. Single. She's as like me as you're not," Jack explained summarily.
+
+Sarella laughed.
+
+"A good girl, though, I'll be bound," she hinted amiably.
+
+"She's never mentioned the contrary--in her letters."
+
+"Oh, she writes! I'm glad she writes."
+
+"Thank you, Miss Sarella. She writes most Christmasses. And she wrote
+lately, tho' it's not Christmas."
+
+"Not ill, I hope?"
+
+"Ill! She's an industrious girl with plenty o' sense ... but her aunt's
+dead, and she thinks o' taking a place in a boarding-house."
+
+"Jack," said Sarella, after a brief but pregnant pause of consideration,
+"bring her up here."
+
+Jack regarded her with a stare of undisguised amazement.
+
+"Why not?" Sarella persisted. "It would be better for you."
+
+"What's that to do with it?"
+
+"And better for Miss Mariquita. It's too much for Miss Mariquita--all
+the work she has to do."
+
+"That's true anyway."
+
+"Of course it's true. Anyone can see that." (That Sarella saw it,
+considerably surprised Jack, and provided matter for some close
+consideration subsequently.)
+
+"Look here, Jack," she went on, "I'll tell you what. You go to Mr. Xeres
+and say you'd like your daughter to come and work for you...."
+
+"And he'd tell me to go and be damned."
+
+"But you'd not go. And he wouldn't want you to go. And _I'll_ speak to
+him."
+
+Jack stared again. He hardly realized yet how much steadily growing
+confidence in her influence with "the Boss" Sarella felt. He made no
+promise to speak to him: but said "he'd sleep on it."
+
+With that sleep came a certain ray of comprehension. Miss Sarella was
+not thinking entirely of him and his loneliness, nor entirely of Miss
+Mariquita. He believed that she really expected the Boss would marry her
+(as all the cowboys had believed for some weeks) and he perceived, with
+some involuntary admiration of her shrewdness, that she had no idea of
+being left, if Miss Mariquita should marry and go away, to do all the
+work as she had done. Once arrived at this perception of the situation,
+Jack went ahead confident of Sarella's quietly persistent help. He had
+not the least dread of rough language. He had no sensitive dread of
+displeasing his master. He would like to have Ginger up at the range
+especially as Ginger's coming would take much of the work off Miss
+Mariquita's hands. He even made Don Joaquin suspect that if Ginger were
+not allowed to come he, Jack, would go, and make a home for her down in
+Maxwell.
+
+It did not suit Don Joaquin to lose Jack, and it suited him very well to
+listen to Sarella.
+
+So Ginger came, and proved, as all the cowboys agreed, a good sort,
+though quite as ugly as her father.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+"Mariquita," said her father one day, "does Sarella ever talk to you
+about religion?"
+
+Anything like what could be called a conversation was so rare between
+them that the girl was surprised, and it surprised her still more that
+he should choose that particular subject.
+
+"She asked me if we were Catholics."
+
+"Of course we are Catholics. You said so?"
+
+"I didn't say 'of course,' but I said we were. She then asked if my
+mother had become one--on her marriage or afterwards."
+
+Don Joaquin heard this with evident interest, and, as Mariquita thought,
+with some satisfaction.
+
+"What did you say?" he inquired.
+
+Mariquita glanced at him as if puzzled. "I told her that my mother
+never became a Catholic," she answered.
+
+"That pleased her?"
+
+"I don't know. She did not seem pleased or displeased."
+
+"She did not seem glad that I had not insisted that my wife should be
+Catholic?"
+
+"She may have been glad--I did not see that she was."
+
+"You did not think she would have been angry if she had heard I had
+insisted that my wife should be Catholic?"
+
+"No; that did not appear to me."
+
+So far as Mariquita's information went, it satisfied her father. Only it
+was a pity Sarella should know that her aunt had not adopted his own
+religion.
+
+Mariquita had not probed the motive of his questions. Direct enough of
+_impression_, she was not penetrating nor astute in following the hidden
+working of other persons' minds.
+
+"It is," he remarked, "a good thing Sarella came here."
+
+"Poor thing! She had no home left--it was natural she should think of
+coming to her aunt."
+
+"Yes, quite natural. And good for you also."
+
+"I was not lonely before--"
+
+"But if I had died?"
+
+Mariquita had never thought of his dying; he was as strong as a tree,
+and she could not picture the range without him.
+
+"I never thought of you dying. You are not old, father."
+
+"Old, no! But suppose I had died, all the same--before Sarella
+came--what would you have done?"
+
+"I never thought of it."
+
+"No. That would have been out of place. But you could not have lived
+here, one girl all alone among all the men."
+
+"No, of course."
+
+"Now you have Sarella. It would be different."
+
+"Oh, yes; if she wished to go on living here--"
+
+"If she went away to live somewhere else you could go with her."
+
+Mariquita did not see that that would be necessary, but she did not say
+so. She was not aware that her father was endeavoring to habituate her
+mind to the permanence of Sarella's connection with herself.
+
+"Of course," he said casually, "you might marry--at any time."
+
+"I never thought of that," the girl answered, and he saw clearly that
+she never _had_ thought of it. Gore would, he perceived, not have her
+for the asking; might have a great deal of asking to do, and might not
+succeed after much asking.
+
+It was not so clear to him that Gore himself was as well aware of that
+as he was.
+
+That she had never had any thoughts of marriage pleased him, partly
+because he would not have liked Gore to get what he wanted, so easily,
+and partly because it satisfied his notion of dignity in her--his
+daughter. It was really his own dignity in her he was thinking of.
+
+All the same, now that he knew she was not thinking of marrying the
+handsome stranger, he felt more clearly that (if Gore's "conditions"
+were suitable) the marriage might suit him--Don Joaquin.
+
+"There are," he observed sententiously, "only two ways for women."
+
+"Two ways?"
+
+"Marriage is the usual way. If God had wanted only nuns, He would have
+created women only. That one sees. Whereas there are women and men--so
+marriage is the ordinary way for women; and if God chooses there should
+be more married women than nuns, it shows He doesn't want too many
+nuns."
+
+The argument was new to Mariquita: she was little used to hear _any_
+abstract discussion from her father.
+
+"You have thought of it," she said; "I have never thought of all that."
+
+"There was no necessity. It might have been out of place. All the same
+it is true what I say."
+
+"But I think it is also true that to be a nun is the best way for some
+women."
+
+"Naturally. For some."
+
+Mariquita had no sort of desire to argue with him, or anyone; arguments
+were, she thought, almost quarrels.
+
+He, on his side, was again thinking of Sarella, and left the nuns
+alone.
+
+"It would," he said, "be a good thing if Sarella should become Catholic.
+If she talks about religion you can explain to her that there can be
+only one that is true."
+
+Mariquita did not understand (though everyone else did) that her father
+wished to marry Sarella, and, of course, she could not know that he was
+resolved against provoking further punishment by marrying a Protestant.
+
+"If I can," she said, slowly, "I will try to help her to see that. She
+does not talk much about such things. And she is much older than I am--"
+
+"Oh, yes; quite very much older," he agreed earnestly, though in fact
+Sarella appeared simply a girl to him.
+
+"And it would not do good for me to seem interfering."
+
+"But," he agreed with some adroitness, "though a blind person were older
+than you (who can see) you would show her the way?"
+
+Mariquita was not, at any rate, so blind as to be unable to see that her
+father was strongly desirous that Sarella should be a Catholic. It had
+surprised her, as she had no recollection of his having troubled himself
+concerning her own mother, his beloved wife, not having been one. Of
+course, she was glad, thinking it meant a deeper interest in religion on
+his own part.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+Between Mariquita and her father there was little in common except a
+partial community of race; in nature and character they were entirely
+different. In her the Indian strain had only physical expression, and
+that only in the slim suppleness of her frame; she would never grow
+stout as do so many Spanish women.
+
+Whereas in her father the Indian blood had effects of character. He was
+not merely subtle like a Latin, but had besides the craft and cunning of
+an Indian. Yet the cunning seemed only an intensification of the
+subtlety, a deeper degree of the same quality and not an added separate
+quality. In fact, in him, as in many with the same mixture of race, the
+Indian strain and the Spanish were really mingled, not merely joined in
+one individual.
+
+Mariquita had, after all, only one quarter Spanish, and one Indian;
+whereas with him it was a quarter of half and half. She had, in actual
+blood, a whole half that was pure Saxon, for her mother's New England
+family was of pure English descent. Yet Mariquita seemed far more purely
+Spanish than her father; he himself could trace nothing of her mother in
+her, and in her character was nothing Indian but her patience.
+
+From her mother personally she inherited nothing, but through her mother
+she had certain characteristics that helped to make her very
+incomprehensible to Don Joaquin, though he did not know it.
+
+Gore, who studied her with far more care and interest, because to him
+she seemed deeply worth study, did not himself feel compelled to
+remember her triple strain of race. For to him she seemed splendidly,
+adorably simple. He was far from falling into Sarella's shallow mistake
+of calling that simplicity "stupidity"; to him it appeared a sublimation
+of purity, rarely noble and fine. That she was book-ignorant he knew, as
+well as that she was life-ignorant; but he did not think her
+intellectually narrow, even intellectually fallow. Along what roads her
+mind moved he could not, by mere study of her, discover; yet he was sure
+it did not stagnate without motion or life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+About a month after the arrival of Sarella, one Saturday night at
+supper, that young person observed that Mr. Gore's place was vacant.
+
+Mariquita must equally have noted the fact, but she had said nothing.
+
+"Isn't Mr. Gore coming to his supper?" Sarella asked her.
+
+Don Joaquin thought this out of place. His daughter's silence on the
+subject had pleased him better.
+
+"I don't know," Mariquita answered, glancing towards her father.
+
+"No," he said; "he has ridden down to Maxwell."
+
+Sometimes one or other of the cowboys would ride down to Maxwell, and
+reappear, without question or remark.
+
+"I wonder he did not mention he was going," Sarella complained.
+
+"Of course he mentioned it," Don Joaquin said loudly. "He would not go
+without asking me."
+
+"But to us ladies," Sarella persisted, "it would have been better
+manners."
+
+"That was not at all necessary," said Don Joaquin; "Mariquita would not
+expect it."
+
+"_I_ would, though. It ought to have struck him that one might have a
+communication for him. I should have had commissions for him."
+
+It was evident that Sarella had ruffled Don Joaquin, and it was the
+first time anyone had seen him annoyed by her.
+
+Next day, after the midday meal, Sarella followed Mariquita out of
+doors, and said to her, yawning and laughing.
+
+"Don't you miss Mr. Gore?"
+
+Mariquita answered at once and quite simply:
+
+"Miss him? He was never here till a month ago--"
+
+"Nor was I," Sarella interrupted pouting prettily. "But you'd miss me,
+now."
+
+"Only you're not going away."
+
+"You take it for granted I shall stop, then?" (And Sarella looked
+complacent.) "That I'm a fixture."
+
+"I never thought of your going away," Mariquita answered, with a formula
+rather habitual to her. "Where would you go?"
+
+"I should decide on that when I decided to go." Sarella declared
+oracularly. But Mariquita took it with irritating calmness.
+
+"I don't believe you will decide to go," she said with that gravity and
+plainness of hers that often irritated Sarella--who liked _badinage_.
+"It would be useless."
+
+"Suppose," Sarella suggested, pinching the younger girl's arm playfully,
+"suppose I were to think of getting married. Shouldn't I have to go
+then?"
+
+"I never thought of that--" Mariquita was beginning, but Sarella pinched
+and interrupted her.
+
+"Do you _ever_ think of anything?" she complained sharply.
+
+"Oh, yes, often, of many things."
+
+"What things on earth?" (with sudden inquisitive eagerness.)
+
+"Just my own sort of things," Mariquita answered, without saying whether
+"her things" were on earth at all. Sarella pouted again.
+
+"You're not very confidential to a person."
+
+Mariquita weighed the accusation. "Perhaps," she said quietly, "I am not
+much used to persons. Since I came home from the convent there was no
+other girl here till you came."
+
+"So you're sorry I came!"
+
+"No; glad. I am glad you did that. It is a home for you. And I am sure
+my father is glad."
+
+"You think he likes my being here?" And Sarella listened attentively for
+the answer.
+
+"Of course. You must see it."
+
+"You think he does not dislike me? He was cross with me last night."
+
+"He did not like you noticing Mr. Gore was away--"
+
+"Of course I noticed it--surely, he could not be jealous of that!"
+
+"I should not think he could be jealous," Mariquita agreed, too readily
+to please Sarella. "But I did not think of it. I am sure he does not
+dislike you. You cannot think he does."
+
+Sarella was far from thinking it. But she had wanted Mariquita to say
+more, and was only partly satisfied.
+
+"_He_ would not like me to go away?" she suggested.
+
+"Oh, no. The contrary."
+
+"Not even if it were advantageous to me?"
+
+"How advantageous?"
+
+"If I were to be going to a home of my own? Going, for instance, to be
+married?"
+
+"That would surprise him...."
+
+Sarella was not pleased at this.
+
+"Surprise him! Why should it surprise him that anyone should marry me?"
+
+"There is no reason. Only, he does not imagine that there _is_ someone.
+If there is someone, he would suppose you had not been willing to marry
+him by your coming here instead."
+
+("Is she stupid or cautious?" Sarella asked herself. "She will say
+nothing.")
+
+Mariquita was neither cautious nor stupid. She was only ignorant of
+Sarella's purpose, and by no means awake to her father's.
+
+"It is terribly hot out here," Sarella grumbled, "and there is such a
+glare. I shall go in and study."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+Mariquita did not go in too. She did not find it hot, nor did the glare
+trouble her. The air was full of life and vigor, and she had no sense of
+lassitude. There was, indeed, a breeze from the far-off Rockies, and to
+her it seemed cool enough, though the sun was so nearly directly
+overhead that her figure cast only a very stunted shadow of herself. In
+the long grass the breeze made a slight rustle, but there was no other
+sound.
+
+Mariquita did not want to be indoors; outside, here on the tilted
+prairie, she was alone and not lonely. The tilt of the vast space around
+her showed chiefly in this--that eastward the horizon was visibly lower
+than at the western rim of the prairie. The prairie was not really flat;
+between her and both horizons there lay undulations, those between her
+and the western rising into _mesas_, which, with a haze so light as only
+to tell in the great distance, hid the distant barrier of the Rocky
+Mountains, whose foothills even were beyond the frontiers of this State.
+
+She knew well where they were, though, and knew almost exactly beyond
+which point of the far horizon lay Loretto Heights, beyond Denver, and
+the Convent.
+
+Somehow the coming of these two new units to the range-life had pushed
+the Convent farther away still. But Mariquita's thoughts never rested in
+the mere memories hanging like a slowly fading arras around that
+long-concluded convent life. What it had given her was more than the
+memories and was hers still.
+
+As to the mere memories, she knew that with slow but increasing pace
+they were receding from her, till on time's horizon they would end in a
+haze, golden but vague and formless. Voices once clearly recalled were
+losing tone; faces, whose features had once risen before the eye of
+memory with little less distinctness than that with which she had seen
+them when physically present, arose now blurred like faces passing a
+fog. Even their individuality, depending less on feature than
+expression, was no longer easily recoverable.
+
+She had been used to remember this and that nun by her very footsteps;
+now the nuns moved, a mere group in one costume, soundlessly, with no
+footstep at all.
+
+Of this gradual loss of what had been almost her only private possession
+she made no inward wishful complaint; Mariquita was not morbid, nor
+melancholy. The operation of a natural law of life could not fill her
+with the poet's rebellious outcry. To all law indeed she yielded without
+protest, whether it implied submission without inward revolt to the mere
+shackles of circumstance, or submission to her father's dominance; for
+it was not in her fashion of mind to form hypothesis--such hypothesis,
+for instance, as that of her father calling upon her to take some course
+opposed to conscience. Though her gaze was turned towards the point of
+the horizon under which the Convent and its intimates were, it was not
+simply to dream of them that she yielded herself.
+
+All that life had had a centre--not for herself only, but for all there.
+The simplicity of the life consisted, above all, in the simplicity of
+its object. Its routine, almost mechanically regular, was not mechanical
+because of its central meaning. No doubt the "work" of the nuns was
+education, but their work of education was service of a Master. And the
+Master was Himself the real object, the centre of the work, as carried
+on within those quiet, busy walls. Mariquita no longer formed a part,
+though the work was still operative in her, and had not ceased with her
+removal from the workers; but she was as near as ever to its centre, and
+was now more concerned with the ultimate object of the work than with
+the work.
+
+Her memories were weakening in color and definiteness, but her
+possession was not decreased, her possession was the Master who
+possessed herself.
+
+The simplicity that Gore had from the first noted in her, without being
+able to inform himself wherein it consisted--but which he venerated
+without knowing its source, that he knew was noble--was first that
+Mariquita did in fact live and move and have her being, as nominally all
+His creatures do, in the Master of that vanished convent life. What the
+prairie was to her body, surrounding it, its sole background and scene
+and stage of action, He was to her inward, very vivid, wholly silent
+life; what the prairie was to her healthy lungs, He was to her soul, its
+breath, "inspiration." Banal and stale as such metaphor is, in her the
+two lives were so unified (in this was the rarity of her "simplicity")
+that it was at least completely accurate.
+
+With Mariquita that which we call the supernatural life was not
+occasional and spasmodic. That inspiration of Our Lord was not, as with
+so many, a gulp, or periodic series of gulps, but a breathing as steady
+and soundless as the natural breathing of her strong, sane, flawless
+body.
+
+She did not, like the self-conscious pietist, listen to it. She did not,
+like the pathological pietist, test its pulse or temperature. The
+pathological pietist is still self-student, though studious of self in a
+new relation; still breathes her own breath at second-hand, and remains
+indoors within the four walls of herself.
+
+Of herself Mariquita knew little. That God had given her, in truth,
+existence; that she knew. That _she_ was, because He chose. That He had
+been born, and died, and lived again, for her sake, as much as for the
+sake of any one of all the saints, though not more than for the sake of
+the human being in all the world who thought least of Him: that she
+knew. That He loved her incomparably better than she could love herself
+or any other person--that she knew with a reality of knowledge greater
+than that with which any lover ever knows himself beloved by the lover
+who would give and lose everything for him. That He had already set in
+her another treasure, the capacity of loving Him--that also she knew
+with ineffable reverence and gladness, and that the power of loving Him
+grew in her, as the power of knowing Him grew.
+
+But concerning herself Mariquita knew little except such things as
+these. She had studied neither her own capacities nor her own
+limitations, neither her tastes, nor her gifts. That Sarella thought
+her stupid, she was hardly aware, and less than half aware that Sarella
+was wrong. No human creature had ever told her that she was beautiful,
+and she had never made any guess on the subject with herself. She never
+wondered if she were happy, or ever unjustly disinherited of the means
+of happiness. Whether, in less strait thrall of circumstance, she might
+be of more consequence, even of more use, she never debated. She had not
+dreamed of being heroic; had no chafing at absence of either sphere or
+capacity for being brilliant. Her life was passing in a silence
+singularly profound among the lives of God's other human creatures, and
+its silence, unhumanness, oblivion (that deepest of oblivion lying
+beneath what _has_ been known though forgotten) did not vex her, and was
+never thought of. Her duties were coarse and common; but they were those
+God had set in her way and sight, and she had no impatience of them, no
+scorn for them, but just did them. They were not more coarse or common
+than those He had himself found to His hand, and done, in the house at
+Nazareth where Joseph was master, and, after Joseph, Mary was mistress,
+and He, their Creator, third, to obey and serve them.
+
+It would be greatly unjust to Mariquita to say that the monotone of her
+life was made golden by the bright haze in which it moved. She lived not
+in a dream, but in an atmosphere. She was not a dreamy person, moving
+through realities without consciousness of them. She saw all around her,
+with living interest, only she saw beyond them with interest deeper
+still, or rather their own significance for her was made deeper by her
+sense of what was beyond them, and to which they, like herself,
+belonged. She was very conscious of her neighbors, not only of the human
+neighbors, but also of the live creatures not human; and each of these
+had, in her reverence, a definite sacredness as coming like herself from
+the hand of God.
+
+There was nothing pantheistic in this; seeing everything as God's she
+did not see it itself Divine, but every natural object was to her clear
+vision but a thread in the clear, transparent veil through which God
+showed Himself everywhere. When St. Francis "preached to the birds" he
+was in fact listening to their sermon to him; and Mariquita, in her
+close neighborly friendship with the small wild creatures of the
+prairie, was only worshipping the ineffable, kind friendliness of God,
+who had made, and who fed, them also. The love she gave them was only
+one of the myriad silent expressions of her love for Him, who loved
+them. They were easier and simpler to understand than her human
+neighbors. It was not that, for an instant, she thought them on the same
+plane of interest--but we must here interrupt ourselves as she was
+interrupted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+Mariquita had been alone a long time when Gore, riding home, came
+suddenly upon her.
+
+She was sitting where a clump of trees cast now a shadow, and it was
+only in coming round them that he saw her when already very near her.
+The ground was soft there, and his horse's hoofs had made scarcely any
+sound.
+
+She turned her head, and he saluted her, at the same moment slipping
+from the saddle.
+
+"I thought you were far away," she said.
+
+"I have been far away--at Maxwell. It has been a long ride."
+
+"Yes, that is a long way," she said. "But I never go there."
+
+"No? I went to hear Mass."
+
+She was surprised, never having thought that he was a Catholic.
+
+"I did not know you were a Catholic," she told him.
+
+"No wonder! I have been here a month and never been to Mass before."
+
+"It is so far. I never go."
+
+"You _are_ a Catholic, then?"
+
+"Oh, yes; I think all Spaniards are Catholics."
+
+"But not all Americans," Gore suggested smiling.
+
+"No. And of course, we are Americans, my father and I."
+
+"Exactly. No doubt I knew your names, both surname and Christian name,
+were Spanish, and I supposed you were of Catholic descent--"
+
+"Only," she interrupted with a quiet matter-of-factness, "you saw we
+never went to Mass."
+
+"Perhaps a priest comes here sometimes and gives you Mass."
+
+"No, never. If it were not so very far, I suppose my father would let me
+ride down to Maxwell occasionally, at all events. But he would not let
+me go alone, and none of the men are Catholics; besides, he would not
+wish me to go with one of them; and then it would be necessary to go
+down on Saturday and sleep there. Of course, he would not permit that.
+But," and she did not smile as she said this, "it must seem strange to
+you, who are a Catholic, to think that I, who am one also, should never
+hear Mass. Since I left the Convent and came home I do not hear it. That
+may scandalize you."
+
+"I shall never be scandalized by you," he answered, also without
+smiling.
+
+"That is best," she said. "It is generally foolish to be scandalized,
+because we can know so little about each other's case."
+
+She paused a moment, and he thought how little need she could ever have
+of any charitable suspension of judgment. He knew well enough by
+instinct, that this inability to hear Mass must be the great
+disinheritance of her life here on the prairie, her submission to it,
+her great obedience.
+
+"But," she went on earnestly, "I hope you will not take any scandal at
+my father either--from my saying that he would not permit my going down
+to Maxwell and staying there all night on Saturday so as to hear Mass
+on Sunday morning. (There is, you know, only one Mass there, and that
+very early, because the priest has to go far into the county on the
+other side of Maxwell to give another Mass.) We know no family down
+there with whom I could stay. He would think it impossible I should stay
+with strange people--or in an hotel. Our Spanish ideas would forbid
+that."
+
+"Oh, yes; I can fully understand. You need not fear my being so stupid
+as to take scandal. I have all my life had enough to do being
+scandalized at myself."
+
+"Ah, yes! That is so. One finds that always. Only one knows that God is
+more indulgent to one's faults than one has learned to be oneself; that
+patience comes so very slowly, and slower still the humility that would
+teach one to be never surprised at any fault in oneself."
+
+Gore reverenced her too truly to say, "Any fault would surprise _me_ in
+you." He only assented to her words, as if they were plain and cold
+matter-of-fact, and let her go on, for he knew she had more to say.
+
+"I would like," she told him, "to finish about my father. Because to
+you he may seem just careless. You may think, 'But why should not _he_
+take her down to Maxwell and hear Mass himself also?' Coming from the
+usual life of Catholics to this life of ours on the prairies, it may
+easily occur to you like that. You cannot possibly know--as if you had
+read it in a book--a man's life like my father's. He was born far away
+from here, out in the desert--in New Mexico. His father baptized
+him--just as _he_ baptized me. There was no priest. There was no Mass.
+How could he learn to think it a necessary part of life? no one can
+learn to think necessary what is impossible. From that desert he came to
+this wilderness; very different, but just as empty. No Mass here either,
+no priest. How could he be expected to think it necessary to ride far,
+far away to find Mass? It would be to him like riding away to find a
+picture gallery. He _couldn't_ be away every Saturday and Sunday. That
+would not be possible; and what is not possible is no sin. And what is
+no sin on three Sundays out of four, or one Sunday out of two, how
+should it seem a sin on the other Sunday? I hope you will understand
+all that."
+
+"Indeed, yes! I hope you do not think I have been judging your father!
+That would be a great impertinence."
+
+"Towards God--yes. That is His business, and no one else understands it
+at all. No, I did not think you would have been judging. Only I thought
+you might be troubled a little. It is a great loss, my father's and
+mine, that we live out here where there is no Mass, and where there are
+no Sacraments. But Our Lord does the same things differently. It is not
+hard for Him to make up losses."
+
+One thing which struck the girl's hearer was that the grave simplicity
+of her tones was never sad. It seemed to him the perfection of
+obedience.
+
+"My father," she went on, "is very good. He always tells the truth.
+Those who deal in horses are said to tell many lies about them. He never
+does. He is very just--to the men, and everybody. And he does not grind
+them, nor does he insult them in reproof. He hates laziness and
+stupidity, and will not suffer either. Yet he does not gibe in finding
+fault nor say things, being master, to which they being servants may not
+retort. That makes fault-finding bitter and intolerable. He works very
+hard and takes no pleasure. He greatly loved my mother, and was in all
+things a true husband. That was a great burden God laid on him--the loss
+of her, but he carried it always in silence. You can hardly know all
+these things."
+
+Gore saw that she was more observant than he had fancied--that she had
+been conscious of criticism in him of her father, and was earnest in
+exacting justice for him.
+
+"But," he said, "I shall not forget them now."
+
+"I shall thank you for that," she told him, beginning to move forward
+towards the homestead that was full in sight, half a mile away. "And it
+will be getting very late. Tea is much later on Sunday, for the men like
+to sleep, but it will be time now."
+
+They walked on together, side by side, he leading his horse by the
+bridle hung loosely over his shoulder. The horse after its very long
+journey of to-day and yesterday was tired out, and only too willing to
+go straight to his stable.
+
+They did not now talk much. Don Joaquin, watching them as they came from
+the house door, saw that.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+"Mr. Gore came back with you," he said to Mariquita as she joined him.
+Gore had gone round to the stables with his horse.
+
+"Yes. As he came back from Maxwell he passed the place where I was
+sitting, and we came on together--after talking for a time."
+
+Mariquita did not think her father was cross-examining her. Nor was he.
+He was not given to inquisitiveness, and seldom scrutinized her doings.
+
+"Mr. Gore," she continued, "went to Maxwell for the sake of going to
+Mass."
+
+"So he is a Catholic!" And Mariquita observed with pleasure that her
+father spoke in a tone of satisfaction. He had never before appeared to
+be in the least concerned with the religion of any of the men about the
+place.
+
+That night, after Sarella and Mariquita had gone to bed, Don Joaquin
+had another satisfaction. He and Gore were alone, smoking; all the large
+party ate together, but the cowboys went off to their own quarters after
+meals. Only Don Joaquin, his daughter, Sarella and Gore slept in the
+dwelling-house. So high up above sea-level, it was cold enough at night,
+and the log fire was pleasant.
+
+What gave him satisfaction was that Gore asked him about the price of a
+range, and whether a suitable one was to be had anywhere near.
+
+"It would not be," Don Joaquin bade him note, "the price of the range
+only. Without some capital it would be throwing money away to buy one."
+
+"Of course. What would range and stock and all cost?"
+
+"That would depend on the size of the range, and the amount of stock it
+would bear. And also on whether the range were very far out, like this
+one. If it were near a town and the railway, it would cost more to buy."
+
+Gore quite understood that, and Don Joaquin spoke of "Blaine's" range.
+"It lies nearer Maxwell than this. But it is not so large, and Blaine
+has never made much of it--he had not capital enough to put on it the
+stock it should have had, and he was never the right man. A townsman in
+all his bones, and his wife towny too. And their girls worse. He _wants_
+to clear. He will never do good there."
+
+The two men discussed the matter at some length. It seemed to the elder
+of them that Gore would seriously entertain the plan, and had the money
+for the purchase.
+
+"I have thought sometimes," said Joaquin, "of buying Blaine's myself."
+
+"Of course, I would not think of it if you wanted it. I would not even
+make any inquiry--that would be sending the price up."
+
+"Yes. But, if you decide to go in for it, I shall not mind. I have land
+enough and stock enough, and work enough. I should have bought it if I
+had a son growing up."
+
+It was satisfactory to Don Joaquin to find that Gore could buy a large
+range and afford capital to stock it. If he went on with such a purchase
+it would prove him "substantial as to conditions." And he was a
+Catholic, also a good thing.
+
+Only Sarella should be a Catholic also. "So you went down to Maxwell to
+go to Mass," he said, just as they were putting out their pipes to go to
+bed. "That was not out of place. Perhaps one Saturday we may go down
+together."
+
+Gore said, of course, that he would be glad of his company.
+
+"It would not be myself only," Don Joaquin explained; "I should take my
+daughter and her cousin."
+
+When Gore had an opportunity of telling this to Mariquita she was full
+of gladness.
+
+"See," she said, "how strong good example is!"
+
+"Is your cousin, then, also a Catholic?" he asked, surprised without
+knowing why.
+
+"Oh, no! My father regrets it, and would like her to be one. That shows
+he thinks of religion more than you might have guessed."
+
+Gore thought that it showed something else as well. It did not, however,
+seem to have occurred to Mariquita that her father wanted to marry her
+cousin.
+
+Sarella strongly approved the idea of going down, all four of them
+together, to Maxwell some Saturday.
+
+"Of course," she said, "it would be for two nights, at least. He
+couldn't expect _us_ to ride back on the Sunday. It will be a treat--we
+must insist on starting early enough to get down there before the shops
+shut. I daresay there will be a theatre."
+
+Mariquita, suddenly, after five years, promised the chance of hearing
+Mass and going to Holy Communion, was not surprised that Sarella should
+only think of it as an outing; she was not a Catholic. But she thought
+it as well to give Sarella a hint.
+
+"I expect," she said, "father will be hoping that you would come to Mass
+with us."
+
+"I? Do you think that? He knows I am not a Catholic--why should he
+care?"
+
+"Oh, he would care. I am sure of that."
+
+Sarella laughed.
+
+"You sly puss! I believe you want to convert me," she said, shaking her
+head jocularly at Mariquita.
+
+"Of course I should be glad if you were a Catholic. Any Catholic
+would."
+
+"I daresay _you_ would. But your father never troubles himself about
+such things--he leaves them to the women. He wouldn't care."
+
+"Yes, he would. You must not judge my father--he thinks without
+speaking; he is a very silent person."
+
+Sarella laughed again.
+
+"Not so silent as you imagine," she said slyly; "he talks to me, my
+dear."
+
+"Very likely. I daresay you are easier to talk to than I am. For I too
+am silent--I have not seen towns and things like you."
+
+"It does make a difference," Sarella admitted complacently. Then, with
+more covert interest than she showed: "If you really think he would like
+me to go with you to Mass, I should be glad to please him. After all,
+one should encourage him in this desire to resume his religious duties.
+Perhaps he would take us again."
+
+"I am quite sure he would like you to hear Mass with us," Mariquita
+repeated slowly.
+
+"Then I will do so. You had better tell me about it--one would not like
+to do the wrong thing."
+
+Perhaps Mariquita told her more about it than Sarella had intended.
+
+"She is tremendously in earnest, anyway," Sarella decided; "she can talk
+on _that_ eagerly enough. I must say," she thought, good-naturedly, "I
+_am_ glad _her_ father's giving her the chance of doing it. I had no
+idea she felt about it like that. She is good--to care so much and never
+say a word of what it is to her not to have it. I never thought there
+was an ounce of religion about the place. She evidently thinks her
+father cares, too. I should want some persuading of _that_. But she may
+be right in saying he expects me to go to his church. She is very
+positive. And some men are like that--their women must do what they do.
+They leave church alone for twenty years, but when they begin to go to
+church their women must go at once. And the Don is masterful enough.
+Perhaps he thinks it's time he began to remember his soul. If so, he is
+sure to begin by bothering about other people's souls. She thinks a lot
+more of him than he thinks of her. In his way, though, he is just as
+Spanish as she is; I suppose that's why I'm to go to Mass."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+Don Joaquin had sounded Mariquita with reference to Sarella's religion.
+It suited him to sound Sarella in reference to Mariquita--and another
+person. This he would not have done had he not regarded Sarella as
+potentially a near relation.
+
+"Mr. Gore talks about interesting things?" he observed tentatively.
+
+"What people call 'interesting things' are sometimes very tedious," she
+answered smartly, intending to please him.
+
+He _was_ a little pleased, but not diverted from his purpose. He never
+was diverted from his purposes.
+
+"He is a different sort of person from any Mariquita has known," he
+remarked; "conversation like his must interest her."
+
+"Only, she does not converse with him."
+
+"But she hears."
+
+"Oh! Mariquita _hears_ everything."
+
+"You don't think she finds him tedious?"
+
+"Oh, no! She does not know anyone is tedious." It by no means struck her
+father that this was a fault in her.
+
+"It is better to be content with one's company," he said. Then, "He does
+not find _her_ tedious, I think, though she speaks little."
+
+"Mr. Gore? Anything but!" And Sarella laughed.
+
+Don Joaquin waited for more, and got it.
+
+"Nobody could interest him more," she declared with conviction, shaking
+her head with pregnant meaning.
+
+"Ah! So I have thought sometimes," Don Joaquin agreed.
+
+"_Anyone_ could see it. Except Mariquita," she proceeded.
+
+"Mariquita not?"
+
+"Not she! Mariquita's eyes look so high she cannot see you and me, nor
+Mr. Gore."
+
+After "you and me" Sarella had made an infinitesimal pause, and had
+darted an instantaneous glance at Don Joaquin. He had scarcely time to
+catch the glance before it was averted and Sarella added, "or Mr.
+Gore."
+
+Don Joaquin did not think it objectionable in his daughter "not to see"
+"you and me"--himself and Sarella--too hastily. But it would ultimately
+be advisable that she should see what was coming before it actually
+came. That would save telling. Neither would he have been pleased if she
+had quickly scented a lover in Mr. Gore; that would have offended her
+father's sense of dignity. Nor would it have been advisable for her to
+suspect a lover in Mr. Gore at any time, if Mr. Gore were not intending
+to be one. Once he was really desirous of being one, and her father
+approved, she might as well awake to it.
+
+"It is true," he said, "Mariquita has not those ideas."
+
+There was undoubtedly a calm communication in his tone. Sarella could
+not decide whether it implied censure of "those ideas" elsewhere.
+
+"Not seeing what can be seen," she suggested with some pique, "may
+deceive others. Thus false hopes are given."
+
+"Mariquita has given no hopes to anyone," her father declared sharply.
+
+"Certainly not. Yet Mr. Gore may think that what is visible must be
+seen--like his 'interest' in her; and that, since it is seen and not
+disapproved...."
+
+"Only, as you said, Mariquita _doesn't_ see."
+
+"He may not understand that. He may see nothing objectionable in
+himself...."
+
+"There is nothing objectionable. The contrary."
+
+And Sarella knew from his tone that Don Joaquin did not disapprove of
+Mr. Gore as a possible son-in-law.
+
+"How hard it is," she thought, "to get these Spaniards to say anything
+out. Why can't they say what they mean?"
+
+Sarella was not deficient in a sort of superficial good-nature. It
+seemed to her that she would have to "help things along." She thought it
+out of the question for Mariquita to go on indefinitely at the range,
+doing the work of three women for no reward, and rapidly losing her
+youth, letting her life be simply wasted. There had never been anyone
+before Mr. Gore, and never would be anyone else; it would be a
+providential way out of the present impossible state of things if he and
+Mariquita should make a match of it. And why shouldn't they? She did not
+believe that he was actually in love with Mariquita yet; perhaps he
+never would be till he discovered in her some sort of response. And
+Mariquita if left to herself was capable of going on for ten years just
+as she was.
+
+"Mr. Gore," she told Don Joaquin, "is not the sort of man to throw
+himself at a girl's head if he imagined it would be unpleasant to her."
+
+"Why should he be unpleasant to her?"
+
+"No reason at all. And he isn't unpleasant to her. Only she never thinks
+of--that sort of thing."
+
+Her father did not want her to "think of that sort of thing"--till
+called upon. Sarella saw that, and thought him as stupid as his
+daughter.
+
+His idea of what would be correct was that Gore should "speak to him,"
+that he should (after due examination of his conditions) signify
+approval, first to Gore himself, and then to Mariquita, whereupon it
+would be her duty to listen encouragingly to Mr. Gore's proposals. Don
+Joaquin made Sarella understand that these were his notions.
+
+("How Spanish!" she thought.)
+
+"You'll never get it done that way," she told him shortly. "Mr. Gore
+will not say a word to you till he thinks Mariquita would not be
+offended--"
+
+"Why should she be offended!"
+
+"She would be, if Mr. Gore came to you, till she had given him some
+cause for believing she cared at all for him. He knows that well enough.
+You may be sure that while she seems unaware of his taking an interest
+in her, he will never give you the least hint. He doesn't _want_ to
+marry her--yet. He won't let himself want it before she gives _some_
+sign."
+
+Sarella understood her own meaning quite well, but Don Joaquin did not
+understand it so clearly.
+
+He took an early opportunity of saying to his daughter:
+
+"I think Mr. Gore a nice man. He is correct. I approve of him. And it is
+an advantage that he is a Catholic."
+
+To call it "an advantage" seemed to Mariquita a dry way of putting it,
+but then her father _was_ dry.
+
+"Living in the house," he continued, wishing she would say something,
+"he must be intimate with us. I find him suitable for that. One would
+not care for it in every case. Had he turned out a different sort of
+person, I should not have wished for any friendship between him and
+yourselves--Sarella and you. It might have been out of place."
+
+"I do not think there would ever be much friendship between Sarella and
+him," said Mariquita; "she hardly listens when he talks about things--"
+
+"But _you_ should listen. It would be not courteous to make him think
+you found his conversation tedious."
+
+"Tedious! I listen with interest."
+
+"No doubt. And there is nothing out of place in your showing it. He is
+no longer a stranger to us."
+
+"He is kind," she said. "He worked hard to help Jack in getting his shed
+fit for Ginger. It was he who built the partitions. Jack told me. Mr.
+Gore said nothing about it. Also, he was good to Ben Sturt when he hurt
+his knee and could not ride; he went and sat with him, chatting, and
+read funny books to him. He is a very kind person. I am glad you like
+him--I was not sure."
+
+"I waited. One wishes to know a stranger before liking him, as you call
+it; what is more important, I approve of him, and find him correct."
+
+Whether this helped much we cannot say. Sarella didn't think so, though
+Don Joaquin reported it to her with much complacence.
+
+"She must know now," he said, "that I _authorize_ him."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+Jack sounded Mr. Gore's praises loudly in Mariquita's ears, and she
+heard them gladly. She thought well of her fellow-creatures, and it was
+always pleasant to her to hear them commended.
+
+Jack also bragged a little of his diplomacy, bidding his daughter note
+how Miss Mariquita had been pleased by his praise of her sweetheart.
+
+"Miss Mariquita has not got even a sweetheart," Ginger declared, "and
+maybe never will. It isn't the way of her. She was just as proud when
+you said a good word for Ben Sturt."
+
+"Ben Sturt! What's _he_ to the young mistress?"
+
+"Just nothing at all--not in that way. Nor yet Mr. Gore isn't. And the
+more's the pity. But she's good-hearted. She likes to hear good of
+folk--as much as some likes to hear ill of anybody, no matter who."
+
+Jack was a little discouraged--but not effectually.
+
+Mr. Gore was much too slow, he thought. Why should Miss Mariquita be
+thinking of him unless he "let on" how much he was thinking of her?
+
+"Did you ever lie under an apple-tree when the blossom was on it?" he
+asked Gore one day.
+
+"I daresay I have."
+
+"And expected to have your mouth full of apples when there was only
+blossom on it?"
+
+Jack forced so much meaning into his ugly old face that Gore could
+discern the allegorical intent. He was very amused.
+
+"There'd never be much _chance_ of apples," he said carelessly, "if the
+tree was shaken till the blossom fell off. The wind spoils more blossom
+than the frost does."
+
+Jack was not the only one who thought Gore slow in his wooing; the
+cowboys thought so too, though they did not, like Jack, find any fault
+with him for his slowness. In general they would have been more critical
+of rapidity and apparent success. Ben Sturt had learned to like him
+cordially, and wished him success, but Ben was of opinion that more
+haste would have been worse speed. He thought that Gore deserved
+Mariquita if anyone could, but was sure that even Gore would have to
+wait long and be very patient and careful. To Ben Mariquita seemed
+almost like one belonging to another world, certainly living on a plane
+above his comprehension, where ordinary love-making would be, somehow,
+unfitting and hopeless. It had always met with her father's cool
+approbation that Mariquita kept herself aloof from the young men about
+the place. But she was not wanting in interest for them. They were her
+neighbors, and she, who had so much interest for all her little dumb
+neighbors of the prairie, had a much higher interest in these bigger,
+but not much less dumb, neighbors of the homestead. They were more than
+a mere group to her. Each individual in the group was, she knew, as dear
+to God as herself, had been created by God for the same purpose as
+herself, and for the soul of each, Christ upon the Cross had been in as
+bitter labor as for the soul of any one of the saints. She was the last
+creature on earth to regard as of mere casual interest to herself those
+in whom God's interest was so deep, and close, and unfailing.
+
+Perhaps they were rough; it might be that of the great things of which
+Mariquita herself thought so habitually, they thought little and seldom:
+but she did not think them bad. She thought more of them than they
+guessed, and liked them better than they imagined. She would have wished
+to serve and help them, and was not indolent, but humble concerning
+herself, and shy. She worked for them, more perhaps than her father
+thought necessary; in that way she could serve them. But she could not
+preach to them, nor exhort them. She would have shrunk instinctively,
+not from the danger of ridicule, but from the danger that the ridicule
+might fall on religion itself, and not merely on her. She would have
+dreaded the risk of misrepresenting religion to them, of giving them
+ideas of God such as would repel them from Him. She knew that speech was
+not easy to her, eloquent speech was no gift of hers; she did not
+believe herself to have any readiness of expressing what she felt and
+knew, and did not credit herself with great knowledge. She did not
+really put them down as being entirely ignorant of what she did know.
+
+The idea of a woman's preaching would have shocked Mariquita, to her it
+would have seemed "out of place." She was a humble girl, with a
+diffidence not universal among those who are themselves trying to serve
+God, some of whom are apt to be slow at understanding that others may be
+as near Him as themselves, though behaving differently, and holding a
+different fashion of speech.
+
+God who had made them must know more about them, she felt, than she
+could. She did not think she understood them very well, but God had made
+the men and knew them as well as He knew the women. She was, with all
+her ignorance and her limited opportunities of observation and
+understanding, able to see much goodness among these neighbors of hers;
+He must be able to see much more.
+
+In reality Mariquita did more for them than she had any idea of. They
+understood that in her was something higher than their understanding;
+that her goodness was real they did understand. It never shocked them as
+the "goodness" of some good people would by a first instinct have
+shocked them, by its uncharity, its self-conscious superiority, its
+selfishness, its complacence, its eagerness to assume the Divine
+prerogative of judgment and of punishment. They were, perhaps
+unconsciously, proud of her, who was so plainly never proud of herself.
+They knew that she was kind. They had penetration enough to be aware
+that if she held her own way, in some external aloofness, it was not out
+of cold indifference, or self-centred pride, not even out of a prudish
+shrinking from their roughness. They became less rough. Their behavior
+in her sight and hearing was not without effect upon their behavior in
+her absence. She taught them a reverence for woman that may only have
+begun in respect for herself. Almost all of them cared enough for her
+approval to try and become more capable of deserving it. Some of them,
+God who taught them knows how, became conscious of her lonely absorption
+in prayer, and the prairie became less empty to them. Probably none of
+them remained ignorant that to the girl God was life and breath,
+happiness and health, master and companion: the explanation of herself
+and of her beauty. They did not understand it all, but they saw more
+than they understood.
+
+The loveliness of each flower preached to Mariquita; sometimes she would
+sit upon the ground, her heart beating, holding in her hand one of those
+tiny weeds that millions of eyes can overlook without perceiving they
+are beautiful, insignificant in size, without any blaze of color, and
+realize its marvel of loveliness with a singular exultation; she would
+note the exquisite perfection of its minute parts--that each tiny spray
+was a string of stars, white, or tenderest azure, or mauve,
+gold-centred, a microscopic installation hidden all its life on the
+prairie-floor, as if falling from heaven it had grown smaller and
+smaller as it neared the earth. Her heart beat, I say, as she looked,
+and the light shining in her happy eyes was exultation at the
+unimaginable loveliness of God, who had imagined this minutest creature,
+and thought it worth while to conceive this and every other lovely thing
+for the house even of His children's exile and probation, their
+waiting-room on the upward road. So it preached to her the Uncreated
+Beauty, and the unbeginning, Eternal Love. As unconscious as was the
+little flower of its fragrance, its loveliness and its message,
+Mariquita, who could never have preached, was giving her message too.
+
+Her rough neighbors saw her near them and (perhaps without knowing that
+they knew it) knew that that which made her rare and exquisite was of
+Divine origin. She never hinted covert exhortation in her talk. If she
+spoke to any of them they could listen without dread of some shrewdly
+folded rebuke. Yet they could not get away from the fact that she was
+herself a perpetual reminder of noble purpose.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+What the cowboys had come, with varying degrees of slowness or celerity,
+to feel by intuitions little instructed by experience or reasoning, Gore
+had to arrive at by more deliberate study.
+
+He was more civilized and less instinctive. He knew many more people,
+and had experience, wanting to them, of many women of fine and high
+character. What made the rarity of Mariquita's instinct did not inform
+him, and he had to observe and surmise.
+
+He saw no books in the house, and did not perceive how Mariquita could
+read; she must, in the way of information and knowledge such as most
+educated girls possess be, as it were, disinherited. Yet he did not feel
+that she was ignorant. It is more ignorant to have adopted false
+knowledge than to be uninformed.
+
+Every day added to Gore's sense of the girl's rarity and nobility. He
+admired her more and more, the reverence of his admiration increasing
+with its growth. Nor was his appreciation blind, or blinded. He surmised
+a certain lack in her--the absence of humor, and he was, at any rate, so
+far correct that Mariquita was without the habit of humor. Long after
+this time, she was thought by her companions to have a delightful
+radiant cheerfulness like mirth. But when Gore first knew her, what
+occasion had she had for indulgence in the habit of humor?
+
+Her father's house was not gay, and he would have thought gaiety in it
+out of place. Loud laughter might resound in the cowboys' quarters, but
+Don Joaquin would have much disapproved any curiosity in his daughter as
+to its cause. He seldom laughed himself and never wished to make anyone
+else laugh. His Spanish blood and his Indian blood almost equally tended
+to make him regard laughter and merriment as a slur on dignity.
+
+Some of those who have attempted the elusive feat of analyzing the
+causes and origin of humor lay down that it lies in a perception of the
+incongruous, the less fit. I should be sorry to think that a complete
+account of the matter. No doubt it describes the occasion of much of our
+laughter, though not, I refuse to believe, of all.
+
+That sense of humor implies little charity, and a good deal of conscious
+superiority. It makes us laugh at accidents not agreeable to those who
+suffer them, at uncouthness, ignorances, solecisms, inferiorities,
+follies, blunders, stupidities, unconsciously displayed weaknesses and
+faults. It is the sort of humor that sets us laughing at a smartly
+dressed person fallen into a filthy drain, at a man who does not know
+how to eat decently, at mispronunciation of names, and misapplication or
+oblivion of aspirates, at greediness not veiled by politeness, at a man
+singing who doesn't know how. Now Mariquita had no conceit and was
+steeped in charity in big and little things. In that sort of humor she
+would have been lacking, for she would have thought too kindly of its
+butt to be able to enjoy his misfortune. And, as has been already said,
+she had no habit of the thing.
+
+Gore, in accusing her of lack of humor, felt that the accusation was a
+heavy one. It was not quite unjust: we have partly explained Mariquita's
+deficiency without entirely denying it, or pretending it was an
+attraction. No doubt, she would have been a greater laugher if she had
+been more ill-natured, had had wider opportunities of perceiving the
+absurdity of her contemporaries.
+
+As for those queer and quaint quips of circumstance that make the oddity
+of daily life for some of us, few of them had enlivened Mariquita. The
+chief occasion of general gathering was round the table, where hunger
+and haste were the most obvious characteristics of the meeting. Till
+Gore came, there had been little conversation. It was not Mariquita's
+fault that she had been used neither to see or hear much that was
+entertaining. Perhaps the facility of being amused is an acquired taste;
+and even so, the faculty of humor is almost of necessity dormant where
+scarcely anything offers for it to work or feed upon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+The projected visit to Maxwell did not immediately take place. Don
+Joaquin was seldom hasty in action, having a chronic, habitual esteem
+for deliberation and deliberateness too.
+
+Sarella would have been impatient had she not been sufficiently unwell
+to shrink for the moment from the idea of a very long ride. For the mere
+pleasure of riding she would never have mounted a horse; she would only
+ride when there was no other means of arriving at some object or place
+not otherwise attainable.
+
+Gore, however, was again absent on the second Saturday after his first
+visit to Maxwell. And on this occasion his place was vacant at
+breakfast. Nor did he return till Monday afternoon.
+
+On that afternoon Mariquita had walked out some distance across the
+prairie. Not in the direction of the Maxwell trail, but quite in the
+opposite direction. Her way brought her to what they called Saul
+Bluff--a very low, broken ridge, sparsely overgrown with small rather
+shabby trees. It would scarcely have hidden the chimneys of a cottage
+had there been any cottage on its farther side; but there was none
+anywhere near it. For many miles there was no building in any direction,
+except "Don Jo's," as, to its owner's annoyance, his homestead was
+called.
+
+When Mariquita had reached the top of the bluff she took advantage of
+the slight elevation on which she stood, to look round upon the great
+spread of country stretching to the low horizon on every side. It was,
+like most days here, a day of wind and sun. The air was utterly pure and
+scentless; the scent was not fir-scent, and the scattered, windy trees
+gave no smell. She saw a chipmunk and laughed, as the sight of that
+queer little creature, and its odd mixture of shyness and effrontery
+always made her laugh.
+
+It was even singularly clear, and the foothills of the Rockies were just
+visible. The trail, which ran over the bluff a little to her left, was
+full in sight below her, but so little used as to be slight enough. A
+mile farther on it crossed the river, and was too faint to be seen
+beyond. The river was five miles behind her as well as a mile in front,
+for it made a big loop, north, and then, west-about, southward.
+
+She sat down and for a long time was rapt in her own thoughts, which
+were not, at first, of any human person. Perhaps she would not herself
+have said that she was praying. But all prayer does not consist in
+begging favors even for others. Its essence does not lie in request, but
+in the lifting of self, heart and mind, to God. The love of a child to
+its father need not necessarily find its sole exercise and expression in
+demand. Her thought and love flew up to her Father and rested,
+immeasurably happy. The real joys of her life were in that presence. The
+sense of His love, not merely for herself, was the higher bliss it gave
+her: not merely for herself, I say, for it spread as wide as all
+humanity, and her own share in it was as little as a star in the milky
+way, in the whole glory, what it is for all the saints in heaven and on
+earth, for all sinners, for His great Mother, and, most immeasurable of
+all, the infinite perfection of His love for Himself, of Father and Son
+for the Holy Spirit, of Son and Spirit for the Eternal Father, of Spirit
+and Father for the Son. This stretched far beyond the reach of her
+vision, but she looked as far as her human sight could reach, as one
+looks on that much of the mystic ocean that eye can hold. Not separable
+from this joy in the Divine Love was her joy in the Divine Beauty, of
+which all created beauty sang, whether it were that of the smallest
+flower or that of Christ's Mother herself. The wind's clean breath
+whispered of it; the vast loveliness of the enormous dome above her, and
+the limitless expanse of not less lovely earth on which that dome
+rested, witnessed to the Infinite Beauty that had imagined and made
+them.
+
+But sooner or later Mariquita must _share_, for in that the silent
+tenderness of her nature showed itself: she could not be content to have
+her great happiness to herself, to enjoy alone. So, presently, in her
+prayer she came, as always, to gathering round her all whom she knew
+and all whom she did not know. As she would have wished _them_ to think
+in their prayer of her, so must she have them also in the Divine
+Presence with her, lift their names up to God, even their names which,
+unknown to her, He knew as well as He knew her own.
+
+Her living father and her dead mother, the old school-friends and the
+nuns, the old priest at Loretto, and a certain crooked old gardener that
+had been there (crooked in body, in face, and in temper), Sarella, and
+Mr. Gore, and all the cowboys--all these Mariquita gathered into the
+loving arms of her memory, and presented them at their Father's feet.
+Her way in this was her own way, and unlike perhaps that of others. She
+had no idea of bringing them to God's memory, as if His tenderness
+needed any reminder from her, for always she heard Him saying: "Can you
+teach Me pity and love?" She did not think it depended on her that good
+should come to them from Him. Were she to be lazy or forgetful, He would
+never let them suffer through her neglect. They were immeasurably more
+His than they could be hers. But she could not be at His feet and not in
+her loving mind see them there beside her, and she knew He chose that at
+His feet she should not forget them. She could not dictate to Him what
+He was to give them, in what fashion He should bless and help them. He
+knew exactly. Her surmises must be ignorant.
+
+Therefore Mariquita's prayer was more wordless than common, less
+phrased; but its intensity was more uncommon. Nor could it be limited to
+those--a handful out of all His children--whom she knew or had ever
+known. There were all the rest--everywhere: those who knew how to serve
+Him, and were doing it, as she had never learned to serve; those who had
+never heard His name, and those who knew it but shrank from it as that
+of an angry observer; those most hapless ones who lived by disobeying
+Him, even by dragging others down into the slough of disobedience; the
+whole world's sick, body-sick and soul-sick; those who here are mad, and
+will find reason only in heaven; the whole world's sorrowful ones, the
+luckless, those gripped in the hard clutch of penury, or the sordid
+clutch of debt; the blind whose first experience of beauty will be
+perfect beauty, the foully diseased, the deformed, the deaf and dumb
+whose first speech will be their joining in the songs of heaven, their
+first hearing that of the music of heaven ... all these, and many, many
+others she must bring about her, or her gladness in God's nearness would
+be selfishness. That nearness! she felt Him much nearer than was her own
+raiment, nearer than was her own flesh....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+It was long after Mariquita had come to her place upon the bluff, that
+the sound of a horse cantering towards it made her rise and go to the
+farther westward edge of the bluff to look. The horseman was quite near,
+below her. It was Gore, and he saw her at the same moment in which she
+saw him. He lifted his big, wide-brimmed hat from his head and waved it.
+It would never have even occurred to her to be guilty of the
+churlishness of turning away to go homeward. Her thoughts, almost the
+only thing of her own she had ever had, she was always ready to lay
+aside for courtesy.
+
+He had dismounted, and was leading his horse up the rather steep slope.
+She stood waiting for him, a light rather than a smile upon her noble
+face, a light like the glow of a far horizon....
+
+"I thought," she said, when he had come up, "that you had gone to
+Maxwell."
+
+"No, I went to Denver this time," he told her, "beyond Denver a little.
+Where do you think I heard Mass yesterday--this morning again, too? for
+both of us, since you could not come."
+
+"Not at Loretto!"
+
+But she knew it was at Loretto. His smile told her.
+
+"Yes, at Loretto. It was the same to me which place I went to. No, not
+the same, for I wanted to see the place where you had been a little
+girl, so that I could come back and bring you word of it."
+
+"Ah, how kind you are!" she said, with a sort of wonder of gratefulness
+shining on her.
+
+("She is far more beautiful than I ever knew," he thought.)
+
+"Not kind at all," Gore protested. "Just to please myself! There's no
+great kindness in that except to myself."
+
+"Oh, yes! for you knew how it would please me. It was wonderful that you
+should be so kind as to think of it."
+
+"It gave _me_ pleasure anyway. To be in the place where you had been so
+happy--"
+
+"Ah, but I am always happy," she interrupted. "Though indeed I was happy
+there, and sorrowful to leave it. But I did not leave it quite behind;
+it came with me."
+
+"I have a great many things to tell you. They remember you _most_
+faithfully. If my going gave _me_ pleasure, it gave them much more. You
+cannot think how much they made of me for your sake; I stayed there a
+long time after Mass yesterday, and they made me go back in the
+afternoon--I was there all afternoon. And all the time we were talking
+of you."
+
+"Then I think," Mariquita declared, laughing merrily, "your talk will
+have been monotonous."
+
+"Oh, not monotonous at all. Are they not dear women? They showed me
+where you sat in chapel--and the different places where you had sat in
+classrooms, and in the refectory, when you first came, as a small girl
+of ten, and as you rose in the school."
+
+"I did not rise very high. I was never one of the clever ones--"
+
+"They kept that to themselves--"
+
+"Oh, yes! They would do that. Nuns are so charitable--they would never
+say that any of the girls was stupid."
+
+"No, they didn't hint that in the least. Sister Gabriel showed me a
+drawing of yours."
+
+"What was it?"
+
+"She said it was the Grand Canal at Venice. I have never been there--"
+
+"Nor I. But I remember doing it. The water wouldn't come flat. It looked
+like a blue road running up-hill. Sister Gabriel was very kind, very
+kind indeed. She used to have hay-fever."
+
+"So she has now. She listened for more than half-an-hour while I told
+her about you."
+
+"Mr. Gore, I think you will have been inventing things to tell her,"
+Mariquita protested, laughing again. She kept laughing, for happiness
+and pleasure.
+
+"Oh, no! On the contrary, I kept forgetting things. Afterwards I
+remembered some of them, and told her what I had left out. Some I only
+remembered when it was too late, after I had come away. Sister Marie
+Madeleine--I hope you remember her too--she asked hundreds of questions
+about you."
+
+"Oh, yes, of course I remember her. She taught me French. And I was
+stupid about it...."
+
+"She was very anxious to know if you kept it up. She said you wanted
+only practice--and vocabulary."
+
+"And idiom, and grammar, and pronunciation," Mariquita insisted,
+laughing very cheerfully. "Did you tell her there was no one to keep it
+up with?"
+
+He told her of many others of the nuns--he had evidently taken trouble
+to bring her word of them all. And he had asked for news of the girls
+she had known best, and brought her news of them also. Several were
+married, two had entered Holy Religion.
+
+"Sylvia Markham," he said, "you remember her? She has come back to
+Loretto to be a nun. She is a novice; she was clothed at Easter. Sister
+Mary Scholastica she is--the younger children call her Sister Elastic."
+
+"Oh," cried Mariquita, with her happy laugh, "how funny it is--to hear
+you talking of Sylvia. She was harum-scarum. What a noise she used to
+make, too! How pretty she was!"
+
+"Sister Elastic is just as pretty. She sent fifty messages to you. But
+Nellie Hurst--you remember her?"
+
+"Certainly I do. She was champion at baseball. And she acted better than
+anybody. Oh, and she edited the Magazine, and she kept us all laughing.
+She _was_ funny! Geraldine Barnes had a quinsy and it nearly choked her,
+but Nellie Hurst made her laugh so much that it burst, and she was soon
+well again...."
+
+"Well, and where do you think she is now?"
+
+"Where?" Mariquita asked almost breathlessly.
+
+"In California. At Santa Clara, near San Jose. She is a Carmelite."
+
+"A Carmelite! And she used to say she would write plays (She did write
+several that were acted at Loretto) and act them herself--on the stage,
+I mean."
+
+It took Gore a long time to tell all his budget of news; he had hardly
+finished before they reached the homestead, towards which the sinking
+sun had long warned them to be moving. And he had presents for her, a
+rosary ("brought by Mother General from Rome and blessed by the Pope,")
+a prayerbook, a lovely Agnus Dei covered with white satin and
+beautifully embroidered, scapulars, a little bottle of Lourdes water,
+another of ordinary holy water, and a little hanging stoup to put some
+of it in, also a statue of Our Lady, and a small framed print of the
+Holy House of Loretto.
+
+Mariquita had never owned so many things in her life.
+
+"Oh, dear!" she said. "And I had been long thinking that I was quite
+forgotten there; I am ashamed. And you--how to thank you!"
+
+"But you have been thanking me all the time," he said, "ever since I
+told you where I had been. Every time you laughed you thanked me."
+
+They met Ben Sturt, who was lounging about by the gate in the homestead
+fence; he had never seen Mariquita with just that light of happiness
+upon her.
+
+"Here," he said to Gore, "let me take the horse; I'll see to him."
+
+He knew that Mariquita would not come to the stables, and he wanted Gore
+to be free to stay with her to the last moment.
+
+As he led the horse away he thought to himself: "It has really begun at
+last;" and he loyally wished his friend good luck.
+
+Within a yard or two of the door they met Don Joaquin.
+
+"Father," she said at once, "Mr. Gore didn't go to Maxwell this time. He
+went all the way to Denver--to Loretto. And see what a lot of presents
+he has brought me from them!"
+
+Gore thought she looked adorable as, like a child unused to gifts, she
+showed her little treasures to the rather grim old prairie dog.
+
+He looked less grim than usual. It suited him that she should be so
+pleased.
+
+"Well!" he said, "you're stocked now. Mr. Gore had a long ride to fetch
+them."
+
+"Oh, yes! Did you ever hear of anybody being so kind?"
+
+Her father noted shrewdly the new expression of grateful pleasure on her
+face. It seemed to him that Gore was not so incompetent as he had been
+supposing, to carry on his campaign. Sarella came out and joined them.
+"What a cunning little pin-cushion!" she exclaimed. "Isn't it just
+sweet?" The Agnus Dei was almost the only one of Mariquita's new
+treasures to which she could assign a use.
+
+"Oh, and the necklace! Garnets relieved by those crystal blobs are just
+the very fashion."
+
+"It is a rosary," Don Joaquin explained in a rather stately tone. It
+made him uneasy--it must be unlucky--to hear these frivolous eulogies
+applied to "holy objects" with which personally he had never had the
+familiarity that diminishes awe.
+
+Mariquita had plenty to do indoors and did not linger. Gore went in also
+to wash and tidy himself after his immensely long ride.
+
+Sarella, who of course knew long before this where Mariquita had
+received her education, and had been told whence these pious gifts came,
+smiled as she turned to Don Joaquin.
+
+"So Gore rode all the way to Denver this time," she remarked.
+
+"It is beyond Denver. Mariquita was pleased to hear news of her old
+friends."
+
+"Oh, I daresay. Gore is not such a fool as he looks."
+
+"I am not thinking that he looks a fool at all," said Don Joaquin, more
+stately than ever.
+
+("How Spanish!" thought Sarella, "I suppose they're _born_ solemn.")
+
+"Indeed," she cheerfully agreed, "nor do I. He wouldn't be so handsome
+if he looked silly. He's all sense. And he knows his road, short cuts
+and all."
+
+Don Joaquin disliked her mention of Gore's good looks, as she intended.
+She had no idea of being snubbed by her elderly suitor.
+
+"Mariquita," he laid down, "will think more of his good sense than of
+his appearance. I have not brought her up to consider a gentleman's
+looks."
+
+Sarella laughed; she was not an easy person to "down."
+
+"But you didn't bring _me_ up," she said, "and I can tell you that you
+might have been as wise as Solomon and it wouldn't have mattered to me
+if you had been ugly. I'd rather look than listen any day; and I like to
+have something worth looking at."
+
+Her very pretty eyes were turned full on her mature admirer's face, and
+he did not dislike their flattery. An elderly man who has been very
+handsome is not often displeased at being told he is worth looking at
+still.
+
+"So do I, Sarellita," he responded, telling himself (and her) how much
+pleasure there was in looking at _her_.
+
+Stately he could not help being, but his manner had now no stiffness;
+and in the double diminutive of her name there was almost a tenderness,
+a nearer approach to tenderness than she could understand. She could
+understand, however, that he was more lover-like than he had ever been.
+
+A slight flush of satisfaction (that he took for maiden shyness) was on
+her face, as she looked up under her half-drooped eyelids.
+
+"Perhaps," he said in much lower tones than he usually employed,
+"perhaps Mr. Gore knows what you call his road better than I. But he
+does not know better the goal he wants to reach."
+
+("Say!" Sarella asked herself, "what's coming?")
+
+Two of the cowboys were coming--had come in fact. They appeared at that
+moment round the corner of the house, ready for supper.
+
+"So," one of them said, with rather loud irritation, evidently
+concluding a story, "my dad married her, and I have a step-ma younger
+than myself--"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+Everyone on the range, from its owner down to old Jack, considered that
+Gore made much more way after his trip to Denver. Mariquita, it was
+decided, had, as it were, awakened to him. It was believed that she and
+he saw more of each other, and that she liked his company.
+
+Sarella thought things were going so well that they had much better be
+left to themselves, and this view she strongly impressed upon Don
+Joaquin. He had gradually come to hold a higher opinion of her sense; at
+first he had been attracted entirely by her beauty. Her aunt had not
+been remarkable for intelligence, and he had not thought the niece could
+be expected to be wiser than her departed elder.
+
+Sarella, on the other hand, did not think her admirer quite so sensible
+as he really was. That he was shrewd and successful in business, she
+knew, but was the less impressed that his methods had been slow and
+unhurried. To her eastern ideas there was nothing imposing (though
+extremely comfortable) in a moderate wealth accumulated by thirty years
+of patient work and stingy expenditure. But she was sure he did not in
+the least understand his own daughter, in whom she (who did not
+understand her any better than she would have understood Dante's _Divina
+Commedia_) saw nothing at all difficult to understand. The truth was
+that Don Joaquin had never understood any woman; without imagination, he
+could understand no sex but his own--and his experience of women was of
+the narrowest. Nevertheless, he was nearer to a sort of rough, nebulous
+perception of his daughter than was Sarella herself.
+
+His saying that Mariquita would not "consider" Gore's good looks, a
+remark that Sarella thought merely ridiculous, was an illustration of
+this. In his _explicit_ mind, in his conscious attitude towards
+Mariquita, he assumed that it was _her_ business and duty to respect
+_him_. He was her parent, so placed by God, and he had a great and
+sincere reverence for such Divine appointments as placed himself in a
+condition of superiority. (Insubordination or insolence in the cowboys
+would have gravely and honestly scandalized him). All the same, in an
+inner mind that he never consulted, and whose instruction he was far
+from seeking, he knew that his daughter was a higher creature than
+himself; all he _knew_ that he knew was that a young girl was
+necessarily more innocent and pure than an elderly man could be (he
+himself was no profligate); that in fact all women were more religious
+than men, and that it behooved them to be so; nature made it easier for
+them.
+
+He had after deliberate consideration decided that it would be
+convenient and suitable that his daughter should marry Gore; the young
+man, he was sure, wished it, and, while the circumstances in which she
+was placed held little promise of a wide choice of husbands for her, he
+would, in Don Joaquin's opinion, make a quite suitable husband. To do
+him justice, he would never have manoeuvred to bring Gore into a
+marriage with Mariquita, had he appeared indifferent to the girl, or
+had he seemed in any way unfit.
+
+But, though Don Joaquin had reached the point of intending the marriage,
+he saw no occasion for much love-making, and none for Mariquita's
+falling in love with the young man's handsome face and fine figure. Her
+business was to learn that her father approved the young man as a
+suitor, and to recognize that that approval stamped him as suitable.
+That Mariquita would not _suddenly_ learn this lesson, Sarella had
+partly convinced him; but he did not think there would now be any
+suddenness in the matter. He would have spoken with authoritative
+plainness to her now, without further delay; but there was a
+difficulty--Gore had not spoken to him.
+
+Don Joaquin thought it was about time he did so.
+
+"You think," he remarked when they were alone together over the fire,
+"that you shall buy Blaine's?"
+
+Now Gore would certainly not buy a range so near Don Joaquin's if he
+should fail to secure a mistress for it in Don Joaquin's daughter. And
+he was by no means inclined to take success with her for granted. He was
+beginning to hope that there was a chance of success--that was all.
+
+"It is worth the money," he answered; "and I have the money. But I have
+not absolutely decided to settle down to this way of life at all."
+
+"I thought you had."
+
+"Well, no. It must depend on what does not depend upon myself."
+
+Don Joaquin found this enigmatical, which Gore might or might not have
+intended that he should. Though wholly uncertain how Mariquita might
+regard him when she came to understand that he wished for more than
+friendship, he was by this time quite aware that her father approved;
+and he was particularly anxious that she should not be "bothered."
+
+Don Joaquin diplomatically hinted that Blaine might close with some
+other offer.
+
+"There is no other offer. He told me so quite straightforwardly. I have
+the refusal. If he does get another offer, and I have not decided, he is
+of course quite free to accept it. He does not want to hurry me; I
+expect he knows that if I did buy, he would get a better price from me
+than from anyone else."
+
+Gore might very reasonably be tired after his immensely long ride, and
+when he went off to bed Don Joaquin could not feel aggrieved. But he was
+hardly pleased by the idea that the young man intended to manage his own
+affairs without discussion of them, and to keep his own counsel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+"Just you leave well alone," said Sarella, a little more didactically
+than Don Joaquin cared for. "Things are going as well as can be
+expected" (and here she laughed a little); "they're moving now."
+
+Don Joaquin urged his opinion that Mariquita ought to be enlightened as
+to his approval of her suitor.
+
+Sarella answered, with plain impatience, "If you tell her she has a
+suitor she _won't_ have one. Don't you pry her eyes open with your
+thumb; let them open of themselves."
+
+Don Joaquin only half understood this rhetoric, and he seldom liked what
+he could not understand.
+
+He adopted a slightly primitive measure in reprisal--
+
+"It isn't," he remarked pregnantly, "as if the young man were not a
+Catholic--I would not allow her to marry him if he were not."
+
+"No?"
+
+And it was quite clear to Don Joaquin that he had killed two birds with
+one stone; he saw that Sarella was both interested and impressed.
+
+"Catholics should marry Catholics," he declared with decision.
+
+"You didn't think so always," Sarella observed, smiling.
+
+"If I forgot it, I suffered for it," her elderly admirer retorted.
+
+Sarella was puzzled. She naturally had not the remotest suspicion that
+he had felt his wife's early death as a reprisal on the part of Heaven.
+She knew little of her aunt, and less of that aunt's married life. Had
+there been quarrels about religion?
+
+"Well, I daresay you may be right," she said gravely. "Two religions in
+one house may lead to awkwardness."
+
+"Yes. That is so," he agreed, with a completeness of conviction that
+considerably enlightened her.
+
+"And after all," she went on, smiling with great sweetness, "they're
+only two branches of the same religion."
+
+This was her way of hinting that the little bird he had married would
+have been wise to hop from her own religious twig to his.
+
+This suggestion, however, Don Joaquin utterly repudiated.
+
+"The same religion!" he said, with an energy that almost made Sarella
+jump. "The Catholic Church and heresy all one religion! Black and white
+the same color!"
+
+Sarella was now convinced that he and his wife had fought on the
+subject. On such matters she was quite resolved there should be no
+fighting in her case; concerning expenditure it might be _necessary_ to
+fight. But Sarella was an easy person who had no love for needless
+warfare, and she made up her mind at once.
+
+"I understand, now you put it that way," she said amiably, "you're right
+again. Both can't be right, and the husband is the head of the wife."
+
+Don Joaquin accepted _this_ theory whole-heartedly, and nodded
+approvingly.
+
+"How," he said, "can a Protestant mother bring up her Catholic son?"
+
+Sarella laughed inwardly. So he had quite arranged the sex of his future
+family.
+
+"But," she said with a remarkably swift riposte, "if Catholics should
+not marry Protestants, they have no business to make love to them. Have
+they?"
+
+Her Catholic admirer looked a little silly, and she swore to herself
+that he was blushing.
+
+"Because," she continued, entirely without blushing, "a Catholic
+gentleman made love to _me_ once--"
+
+"Perhaps," suggested Don Joaquin, recovering himself "he hoped you would
+become a Catholic, if you accepted him."
+
+"I daresay," Sarella agreed very cheerfully.
+
+"But you evidently did not accept him."
+
+"As to that," she explained frankly, "he did not go quite so far as
+asking me to marry him."
+
+"He drew back!"
+
+"Not exactly. He was interrupted."
+
+"But didn't he resume the subject?"
+
+Sarella laughed.
+
+"I'd rather not answer that question," she answered; "you're asking
+quite a few questions, aren't you?"
+
+"I want to ask another. Did you like that Catholic gentleman well enough
+to share all he had, his religion, his name, and his home?"
+
+Don Joaquin was not laughing, on the contrary, he was eagerly serious,
+and Sarella laughed no more.
+
+"He never did ask me to share them," she replied with a self-possession
+that her elderly lover admired greatly.
+
+"But he does. He is asking you. Sarella, will you share my religion, and
+my name, my home, and all that I have?"
+
+Even now she was amused inwardly, not all caused by love. She noted, and
+was entertained by noting, how he put first among things she was to
+share, his religion--because he was not so sure of her willingness to
+share that as of her readiness to share his name and his goods, and
+meant to be sure, as she now quite understood. It did not make her
+respect him less. She had the sense to know that he would not make a
+worse husband for caring enough for his religion to make a condition of
+it, and she was grateful for the form in which he put the condition. He
+spared her the brutality of, "I will marry you if you will turn Catholic
+to marry me, but I won't if you refuse to do that."
+
+She smiled again, but not lightly. "I think," she said, "you will need
+some one when Mariquita goes away to a home of her own. And I think I
+could make you comfortable and happy. I will try, anyway. And it would
+never make you happy and comfortable if we were of different religions.
+If my husband's is good enough for him, it must be good enough for me."
+
+Poor Sarella! She was quite homeless, and quite penniless. She had not
+come here with any idea of finding a husband in this elderly Spaniard,
+but she could think of him as a husband, with no repugnance and with
+some satisfaction. He was respectable and trustworthy; she believed him
+to be as fond of her as it was in his nature to be fond of anybody. He
+had prudence and good sense. And his admiration pleased her; her own
+sense told her that she would get in marrying him as much as she could
+expect.
+
+"Shall you tell Mariquita, or shall I?" she inquired before they parted.
+
+"I will tell her. I am her father," he replied.
+
+"Then, do not say anything about her moving off to a home of her own--"
+
+"Why not?" he asked with some obstinacy. For in truth he had thought the
+opportunity would be a good one for "breaking ground."
+
+"Because she will think we want to get rid of her; or she will think _I_
+do. Tell her, instead, that I will do my best to make her happy and
+comfortable. If I were you, I should tell her you count on our marriage
+making it pleasanter for her here."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+When her father informed her of his intended marriage, Mariquita was
+much more taken aback than he had foreseen. He had supposed she must
+have observed more or less what was coming.
+
+"Marry Sarella, father!" she exclaimed, too thoroughly astonished to
+weigh her words, "but you are her uncle!"
+
+Don Joaquin, who was pale enough ordinarily, reddened angrily.
+
+"I am no relation whatever to her," he protested fiercely. "How dare you
+accuse your father of wishing to marry his own niece? How dare you
+insult Sarella by supposing she would marry her uncle?"
+
+It was terrible to Mariquita to see her father so furious. He had never
+been soft or tender to her, but he had hardly ever shown any anger
+towards her, and now he looked at her as if he disliked her.
+
+It did astonish her that Sarella should be willing to marry her uncle.
+Sarella had indeed, as Don Joaquin had not, thought of the difficulty;
+but she saw that there appeared to be none to him; no doubt, he knew
+what was the marriage-law among Catholics, and perhaps that was why he
+was so insistent as to her being one.
+
+"I know," Mariquita said gently, "that there is no blood relationship
+between her and you. She is my first cousin, but she is only your niece
+by marriage. I do not even know what the Church lays down."
+
+Her father was still angry with her, but he was startled as well. He did
+not know any better than herself what the Church laid down. He did know
+that between him and Sarella there was no real relationship--in the law
+of nature there was nothing to bar their marriage, and he had acted in
+perfect good faith. But he did not intend to break the Church's law
+again.
+
+"If you are ignorant of the Church's law," he said severely, "you should
+not talk as if you knew it."
+
+She knew she had not so talked, but she made no attempt to excuse
+herself.
+
+"It is," she said quietly, "quite easy to find out. The priest at
+Maxwell would tell you immediately."
+
+She saw that her father, though still frowning heavily, was not entirely
+disregardful of her suggestion.
+
+"Father," she went on in a low gentle tone, "I beg your pardon if, being
+altogether surprised, I spoke suddenly, and seemed disrespectful."
+
+"You were very disrespectful," he said, with stiff resentment.
+
+Mariquita's large grave eyes were full of tears, but he did not notice
+them, and would have been unmoved if he had seen them. It was difficult
+for her to keep them from overflowing, and more difficult to go on with
+what she wished to say.
+
+"You know," she said, "that there are things which the Church does not
+allow except upon conditions, but does allow on conditions--"
+
+"What things?"
+
+"For instance, marriage with a person who is not a Catholic--"
+
+Don Joaquin received a sudden illumination. Yes! With a dispensation
+that would have been dutiful which he had done undutifully without one.
+
+"You think a dispensation can be obtained in--in this case."
+
+"Father," she answered almost in a whisper, "I am quite ignorant about
+it."
+
+He had severely reprimanded her for speaking, being ignorant. Now he
+wanted encouragement and ordered her to speak.
+
+"But say what you think," he said dictatorially.
+
+"As there is no real relationship," she answered, courageously enough
+after her former snubbing, "if such a marriage is forbidden" (he scowled
+blackly, but she went on), "it cannot be so by the law of God, but by
+the law of the Church. She cannot give anyone permission to disregard
+God's law, but she can, I suppose, make exception to her own law. That
+is what we call a dispensation. God does not forbid the use of meat on
+certain days, but she does. If God forbade it she could never give
+leave for it; but she often gives leave--not only to a certain person,
+but to a whole diocese, or a whole country even, for temporary
+reasons--what we call a dispensation."
+
+Don Joaquin had listened carefully. He was much more ignorant of
+ecclesiastical matters than his daughter. He had never occupied himself
+with considering the reasons behind ecclesiastical regulations, and much
+that he heard now came like entirely new knowledge. But he was Spaniard
+enough to understand logic very readily, and he did understand
+Mariquita.
+
+"So," he queried eagerly, "you think that even if such a marriage is
+against regulation" (he would not say "forbidden"), "there might be a
+dispensation?"
+
+"I do not see why there should not."
+
+"Of course, there is no reason," he said loftily, adding with ungracious
+ingratitude, "and it was extremely out of place for you to look shocked
+when I told you of my purpose."
+
+Mariquita accepted this further reproof meekly. Don Joaquin was only
+asserting his dignity, that had lain a little in abeyance while he was
+listening to her explanations.
+
+"I shall have to be away all to-morrow," he said, "on business. I do not
+wish you to say anything to Sarella till I give you permission."
+
+"Of course not."
+
+Don Joaquin was not addicted to telling fibs--except business ones; in
+selling a horse he regarded them as merely the floral ornaments of a
+bargain, which would have an almost indecent nakedness without them. But
+on this occasion he stooped to a moderate prevarication.
+
+"Sarella," he confidentially informed that lady, "I shall be up before
+sunrise and away the whole of to-morrow. Sometime the day after I shall
+have a good chance of telling Mariquita. Don't you hint anything to her
+meanwhile."
+
+"Not I," Sarella promised.
+
+("A hitch somewhere," she thought, feeling pretty sure that he had
+spoken to Mariquita already.)
+
+When Don Joaquin, after his return from Maxwell, spoke to Mariquita
+again, he once more condescended to some half-truthfulness--necessary,
+as he considered, to that great principle of diplomacy--the balance of
+power. A full and plain explanation of the exact position would, he
+thought, unduly exalt his daughter's wisdom and foresight at the expense
+of his own.
+
+"The priest," he informed her, "will, _of course_, be very pleased to
+marry Sarella and myself when we are ready. That will not be until she
+has been instructed and baptized. It will not be for a month or two."
+
+Mariquita offered her respectful congratulations both on Sarella's
+willingness to become a Catholic, and on the marriage itself. She was
+little given to asking questions, and was quite aware that her father
+had no wish to answer any in the present instance.
+
+Neither did he tell Sarella that a dispensation would be necessary;
+still less, that the priest believed the dispensation would have to be
+sought, through the Bishop, of course, from the Papal Delegate, and
+professed himself even uncertain whether the Papal Delegate himself
+might not refer to Rome before granting it, though he (the priest)
+thought it more probable that His Excellency would grant the
+dispensation without such reference.
+
+Don Joaquin merely gave Sarella to understand that their marriage would
+follow her reception into the Church, and that the necessary instruction
+previous to that reception would take some time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+As the marriage could not take place without delay, Don Joaquin did not
+wish it to be unreservedly announced; the general inhabitants of the
+range might guess what they chose, but they were not at present to be
+informed.
+
+"Mariquita may tell Gore," he explained to Sarella, "that is a family
+matter."
+
+"And I am sure she will not tell him unless you order her to," said
+Sarella; "she does not think of him in that light."
+
+"What light?" demanded Don Joaquin irritably.
+
+"As one of the family," Sarella replied, without any irritation at all.
+Her placidity of temper was likely to be one of her most convenient
+endowments.
+
+"I shall give her to understand," said Don Joaquin, "that there is no
+restriction on her informing Mr. Gore."
+
+Sarella shrugged her pretty shoulders and made no comment.
+
+Mariquita took her father's intimation as an order and obeyed, though
+surprised that he should not, if he desired Mr. Gore to know of his
+approaching marriage, tell him himself. Possibly, she thought, her
+father was a little shy about such a subject.
+
+Mr. Gore received her announcement quite coolly, without any
+manifestation of surprise. It had not, as Don Joaquin had hoped it
+might, the least effect of hurrying his own steps.
+
+"Am I," he inquired, "supposed to show that I have been told?"
+
+"Oh, I think so."
+
+So that night when they were alone, after the others had gone to their
+rooms, Gore congratulated his host.
+
+"Thank you! You see," said Don Joaquin, assuming a tone of pathos that
+sat most queerly on him, "as time goes on, I should be very lonely."
+
+He shook his head sadly, and Gore endeavored to look duly sympathetic.
+
+"Sarella," the older man proceeded, "could not stop here--if she were
+not my wife--after Mariquita had left us."
+
+Gore, who perfectly understood Mariquita's father and his diplomacy,
+would not indulge him by asking if his daughter were, then, likely to
+leave him.
+
+So Don Joaquin sighed and had to go on.
+
+"Yes! It would be very lonely for me, dependent as I am for society on
+Mariquita."
+
+Here Gore, with some inward amusement, could not refrain from accusing
+his possible father-in-law of some hypocrisy; for he was sure the
+elderly gentleman would miss his daughter as little as any father could
+miss his child.
+
+"Certainly," he said aloud, "it is hard to think how the range would get
+on without her."
+
+No doubt, her absence would be hard to fill in the matter of usefulness,
+and Gore was inclined to doubt whether Sarella would even wish to fill
+it. He was pretty sure that that young woman would refuse to work as her
+cousin had worked.
+
+"It _must_ get on without her," Don Joaquin agreed, not without doubt,
+"when her time comes for moving to a home of her own."
+
+Still Gore refused to "rise."
+
+"We must be prepared for that," Mariquita's father went on, refilling
+his pipe. "She is grown up. It is natural she should be thinking of her
+own future--"
+
+Gore suddenly felt angry with him, instead of being merely amused. To
+him it appeared a profanation of the very idea of Mariquita, to speak of
+her as indulging in surmises and calculations concerning her own
+matrimonial chances.
+
+"It would not," he said, "be unnatural--but I am sure her mind is given
+to no such thoughts."
+
+Don Joaquin slightly elevated his eyebrows.
+
+"I do not know," he said coldly, "how you can answer for what her mind
+is given to. I, at any rate, must have such thoughts on her account. I
+am not English. English parents may, perhaps, leave all such things to
+chance. We, of my people, are not so. To us it seems the most important
+of his duties for a father to trust to no chances, but arrange and
+provide for his daughter's settlement in life."
+
+Here the old fellow paused, and having shot his bolt, pretended it had
+been a mere parenthesis in answer to an implied criticism.
+
+"But," he continued, "I have wandered from what I was really explaining.
+I was telling that soon I should, in the natural course of things, be
+left here alone, as regards home companionship, unless I myself tried to
+find a mate, so I tried and I have succeeded."
+
+Here he bowed with great majesty and some complacence, as if he might
+have added, "Though you, in your raw youthfulness and conceit, may have
+thought me too old a suitor to win a lovely bride."
+
+Gore responded by the heartiest felicitations. "Sir," he added after a
+brief pause, "since it seems to me that you wish it, I will explain my
+own position. I can well afford to marry. And I would wish very much to
+marry. But there is only one lady whom I have ever met, whom I have now,
+or ever, felt that I would greatly desire to win for my wife."
+
+So far Don Joaquin had listened with an absolutely expressionless
+countenance of polite attention, though he had never been more
+interested.
+
+"The lady," Gore continued, "is your daughter."
+
+(Here that lady's father relaxed the aloofness of his manner, and
+permitted himself a look of benign, though not eager, approval.)
+
+"It may be," the young man went on, "that you have perceived my
+wishes...."
+
+(Don Joaquin would express neither negation nor assent.)
+
+"Anyway, you know them now. But your daughter does not know them. To
+thrust the knowledge of them prematurely upon her would, I am sure, make
+the chance of her responding to them very much less hopeful. Therefore I
+have been slow and cautious in endeavoring to gain even a special
+footing of friendship with her; I have, lately, gained a little. I
+cannot flatter myself that it is more than a little; between us there
+is on her side only the mere dawn of friendship. That being so, I should
+have been unwilling to speak to yourself--lest it should seem like
+assuming that she had any sort of interest in me beyond what I have
+explained. I speak now because you clearly expect that I should. Well, I
+have spoken. But I am so greatly in eager earnest about this that I ask
+you plainly to allow me to endeavor to proceed with what, I think, you
+almost resent as a timidity of caution. It is my only chance."
+
+Don Joaquin did not see that at all. If he were to inform Mariquita that
+Mr. Gore wished to become her husband and he, her father, wished her to
+become Mr. Gore's wife, he could not bring himself to picture such
+disobedience as any refusal on her part would amount to.
+
+"Our way," he said, "is more direct than your fanciful English way; it
+regards not a young girl's fanciful delays, and timid uncertainty, but
+her solid welfare, and therefore her solid happiness. In reality it gets
+over her maiden modesty in the best way--by wise authority. She does not
+have to tell herself baldly, 'I have become in love with this young
+man,' but 'My parents have found this young man worthy to undertake the
+charge of my life and my happiness, and I submit to their experience and
+wisdom.' Then duty will teach her love; a safer teacher than fancy."
+
+"I hope, sir," said Gore, "that you do not yourself propose that
+method."
+
+"And if I did?"
+
+"I would, though more earnestly desirous to win your daughter than I am
+desirous of anything in this life, tell you that I refuse to win her in
+that way. It never would win her."
+
+"'Win her'! She is all duty--"
+
+"Excuse me! No duty would command her to become my wife if she could
+only do so with repugnance. If you told her it was her duty I should
+tell her it was no such thing."
+
+Don Joaquin was amazed at such crass stupidity. He flung his open hands
+upwards with angry protest. He was even suspicious. Did the young man
+really _want_ to marry his daughter? It was much more evident that he
+was in earnest now, than it had been to Don Joaquin that he was in
+earnest before.
+
+The elderly half-breed had not the least idea of blaming his own crude
+diplomacy; on the contrary, he had been pluming himself on its success.
+For some time he had desired to obtain from Gore a definite expression
+of his wish to marry Mariquita, and he had obtained it. That it had been
+speedily followed by this further pronouncement, incomprehensible to the
+girl's father, was not _his_ fault, but was due entirely to the
+Englishman's peculiarities, peculiarities that to Don Joaquin seemed
+perverse and almost suspicious.
+
+"If you were a Spaniard," he said stiffly, "you would be grateful to me
+for being willing to influence my daughter in your favor."
+
+Gore knew that he must be disturbed, as it was his rule to speak of
+himself not as a Spaniard, but as an American.
+
+"I am grateful to you, sir, for being willing to let me hope to win your
+daughter for my wife--most grateful."
+
+"You do not appear grateful to me for my willingness to simplify
+matters."
+
+"They cannot be simplified--nor hurried. If your daughter can be brought
+to think favorably of me as one who earnestly desires to have the great,
+great honor and privilege of being the guardian of her life and its
+happiness, it must be gradually and by very gentle approaches. I hope
+that she already likes me, but I am sure she does not yet love me."
+
+"Before she has been asked to be your wife! Love you! Certainly not. She
+will love her husband, for that will be her duty."
+
+Gore did not feel at all like laughing; his future father-in-law's
+peculiarities seemed as perverse to him as his own did to Don Joaquin.
+He dreaded their operation; it seemed only too possible that Don Joaquin
+would be led to interference by them, and such interference he feared
+extremely; nor could he endure the idea of Mariquita's being dragooned
+by her father.
+
+"If," he declared stoutly, "you thrust prematurely upon your daughter
+the idea of me as her husband, you will make her detest the thought of
+me, and I never _shall_ be her husband."
+
+Don Joaquin was offended.
+
+"I am not used to do anything prematurely," he said grimly. "And it may
+be that I understand my daughter, who is of my own race, better than you
+who are not of her race."
+
+"It may be. But I am not certain that it is so. Sir, since you have
+twice alluded to that question of race, you must not be surprised or
+displeased if I remind you that she is as much of my race as of your
+own. Half Spanish she is, but half of English blood."
+
+Don Joaquin _was_ displeased, but all the same, he did feel that there
+might be something in Gore's argument. He had always thought of
+Mariquita as Spanish like himself; but he had never been unconscious
+that she was unlike himself--it might possibly be by reason of her
+half-English descent.
+
+"The lady," Gore went on, "whom you yourself are marrying, would perhaps
+understand me better than you appear to do."
+
+This reference to Sarella did not greatly conciliate her betrothed. He
+did not wish her to be occupied in understanding any young man. All the
+same, he was slightly flattered at Gore's having, apparently, a
+confidence in her judgment. Moreover, he knew that it was so late that
+this discussion could not be protracted much longer, and he was not
+willing to say anything like an admission that he had receded (which he
+had not) from his own opinion.
+
+"Her judgment," he said, "is good. And she has a maternal interest in
+Mariquita. I will tell her what you have said."
+
+Gore went to bed smiling to himself at the idea of Sarella's maternal
+interest. She did not strike him as a motherly young lady.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+Sarella found considerable enjoyment in the visits to Maxwell
+necessitated by her period of instruction. Each instruction was of
+reasonable length and left plenty of time for other affairs, and that
+time landed Don Joaquin in expenses he had been far from foreseeing.
+Sarella had a fund of mild obstinacy which her placidity of temper
+partly veiled. She intended that considerable additions to the furniture
+of the homestead should be made, and she did _not_ intend to get married
+without some considerable additions to her wardrobe as well. Her
+dresses, she assured Don Joaquin, were all too youthful. "Girl's
+clothes" she called them. She insisted on the necessity of now dressing
+as a matron. "Perhaps," she admitted with sweet ingenuousness, "I have
+dressed too young. One gets into a sort of groove. There was nothing to
+remind me that I had passed beyond the stage of school-girl frocks. But
+a married woman, unless she is a silly, must pull herself up, and adopt
+a matron's style; I would rather now dress a bit too old than too young.
+You don't want people to be saying you have married a flapper!"
+
+She got her own way, and Don Joaquin, had he known anything about it,
+might have discovered that matronly garments were more expensive than a
+girl's. "A girl," Sarella informed Mariquita, "need only be smart. A
+matron's dress must be handsome."
+
+To do her justice, Sarella tried to convince her lover that Mariquita
+also should be provided with new clothes; but he would agree only to one
+new "suit," as he called it, for his daughter to wear at his wedding. He
+had no idea of spending his own money on an extensive outfit "for
+another man's wife." That expense would be Gore's. Even in Sarella's
+case he would never have agreed to buy all she wanted had it been
+announced at once, but she was far too astute for any such mistake as
+that. It appeared that there must be some delay before their marriage,
+and she utilized it by spreading her gradual demands over as long a time
+as she could.
+
+Some of the expense, too, Don Joaquin managed to reduce by discovering a
+market he had hardly thought of till now, for the furs of animals he had
+himself shot; some of these animals were rather uncommon, some even
+rare, and he became aware of their commercial value only when bargaining
+for their making up into coats or cloaks for Sarella. His subsequent
+visits to this "store" in order to dispose of similar furs against a
+reduction in its charges for Sarella's clothing, he studiously concealed
+from her, but Sarella knew all about it.
+
+"Why," she said to herself, really admiring his sharpness, "the old boy
+is making a _profit_ on the bargain. He's getting more for his furs than
+he's spending."
+
+She was careful not to let him guess that she knew this; but she
+promised herself to "take it out in furniture." And she kept her
+promise. It was Sarella's principle that a person who did not keep
+promises made to herself would never keep those made to other people.
+
+"You really must," she told him, "have some of those furs made into a
+handsome winter jacket for Mariquita. They cost you nothing, and she
+must have a winter jacket. The one she has was got at the Convent--and a
+present, too, I believe. It was handsome once--and that shows how
+economical _good_ clothes are; they last so--"
+
+(Don Joaquin thought, "especially economical when they are presents.")
+
+"--But Mariquita has grown out of it. She is so tall. A new one made of
+cloth from the store would cost more than one for me, because she is so
+tall. But those furs cost you nothing."
+
+She knew he would not say, "No, but I can sell them."
+
+"Besides," she added, "if you offered them some more furs at the store
+they might take something off the charge of making and lining. It is
+often done. I'll ask them about it if you like."
+
+Don Joaquin did not at all desire her to do that.
+
+"No necessity," he said hastily; "Mariquita shall have the jacket. I
+will take the furs and give the order myself."
+
+"Only be sure to insist that the lining is silk. They have some silvery
+gray silk that would just go with those furs. And Mariquita would _pay_
+good dressing. Her style wants it. She's solid, you know."
+
+Mariquita did get the jacket. But it was not of the fur Sarella had
+meant--her father knew by that time the value of that sort of fur. And
+Sarella knew that she had made it quite clear which sort she had asked
+him to supply. She was amused by his craftiness, and though a little
+ashamed of him, she was readier to forgive his stinginess than if it had
+been illustrated in a garment for herself. After all, it was perhaps as
+well that Mariquita's should not be so valuable as her own.
+
+"And married women," she reminded herself, "do have to dress handsomer
+than girls. And Mariquita will never know the difference."
+
+"_I_ suggested," she told her cousin, "the same gray fur as mine. But I
+daresay a brown fur will suit your coloring better, and it's _younger_.
+Anything gray (in the fur line) can be worn with mourning, and nothing's
+so elderly as mourning."
+
+It was the first present her father had ever given Mariquita, and she
+thanked him with a warmth of gratefulness that ought to have made him
+ashamed. But Don Joaquin was not subject to the unpleasant consciousness
+of shame. On the contrary, he thought with less complacence of
+Mariquita's thanks than of the fact that he had given her a necessary
+winter garment at a profit--for he had taken the other furs to the store
+and received for them a substantial cash payment over and above the
+clearing of the charges for making up and lining the commoner skins of
+which the winter jacket was made.
+
+"I wonder," thought Sarella, "what that lining is? It looks silky, but
+I'm sure it isn't silk. I daresay it's warmer. And after all, Gore can
+get it changed for silk when it's worn out; the fur will outlast two
+linings at least. It's not so delicate as mine. I'm afraid mine'll
+_flatten_. I must look to that."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+Meanwhile the instructions did proceed, and Sarella did not mind them
+much. Perhaps she was not always attending very laboriously--she had a
+good deal to think of; but she listened with all due docility, and with
+quite reasonable, if not absorbed, interest; and by carefully abstaining
+from asking questions, did not often betray any misunderstanding of the
+nun's explanations, for it was by one of the nuns that all but the
+preliminary instructions were given. Sarella rather liked her, deciding
+that she was "a good sort," and, though neither young nor extremely
+attractive, she was "as kind as kind," and so intensely full of her
+subject that Sarella could not help gathering a higher appreciation of
+its importance. In Sarella the earnest expounder of Catholic doctrine
+and practice had no bigotry and not much prejudice to work against;
+only a thick crust of ignorance, and perhaps a thicker layer of natural
+indifference. The little she had heard about the Catholic Church was
+from Puritan neighbors in a very small town of a remote corner of New
+England, and if it had made any particular impression, must have been
+found unfavorable; but Sarella had been too little interested in
+religion to adopt its rancors, her whole disposition, easy,
+self-indulgent and material, being opposed to rancor as to all rough,
+sharp, and uncomfortable things.
+
+Perhaps the nun was hardly likely to overcome the indifference, and
+perhaps she knew it. But she prayed for Sarella much oftener than she
+talked to her, and had much more confidence in what Our Lord Himself
+might do for her than in anything that she could.
+
+"After all," she would urge, "it is more Your own business than mine. I
+did not make her, nor die for her. Master, do Your own work that I
+cannot."
+
+Besides, she, who had no belief in chance, would cheer herself by
+remembering that He had so ordered His patient providence as to bring
+the girl to the gate of the Church, by such ways as she was so far
+capable of. He had begun the work; He would not half do it. He would
+make it, the nun trusted, a double work. For in, half-obstinately,
+insisting that Sarella must become a Catholic before he married her, the
+old Spaniard, half-heathen by lifelong habit, had begun to awake to some
+sort at least of Catholic feeling, some beginning of Catholic practice,
+for now he was occasionally hearing Mass, and that first lethargic
+movement of a better spirit in him might, with God's blessing, would,
+lead to something more genuinely spiritual.
+
+The nun attributed those beginnings to the prayers of the old
+half-breed's daughter. As yet she knew her but little, but already, by
+the _discretio spiritum_, which is, after all, perhaps only another name
+for the clear instinct in things of grace earned by those who live by
+grace, the elderly nun, plain and simple, recognized in Mariquita one of
+a rare, unfettered spirituality.
+
+Sarella had not, at all events consciously, to herself, told her
+instructress much about her young cousin.
+
+"Oh, Mariquita!" she had said, not ill-naturedly, "she lives up in the
+moon."
+
+("Higher up than that, I expect," thought Sister Aquinas, gathering the
+impression that Mariquita was not held of much account in the family.)
+
+"But she is not an idler?" said the nun.
+
+"Oh, not a bit," Sarella agreed with perfectly ungrudging honesty. "An
+idler! No; she works a lot harder than she ought; harder than she would
+if I had the arranging of things. Not quite so hard as she used, though,
+for I have made her father get some help, and he will have to get more
+if Mariquita leaves us."
+
+Perceiving that the nun did not smile, but retreated into what Sarella
+called her "inside expression," that acute young woman guessed that she
+might have conveyed the idea that her future stepdaughter was to be sent
+away on her father's marriage.
+
+"There's always," she explained carelessly, "the chance of her marrying.
+She is handsome in her own way, and I don't think she need remain long
+unmarried if she chose to marry. Not that _she_ ever thinks of it."
+
+("I expect not," thought Sister Aquinas.)
+
+This was about as near to gossip as they ever got. Sarella, indeed,
+would have liked the nun better if she had been "more chatty." I don't
+know that Sister Aquinas really disliked chat so long as it wasn't
+gossip, but the truth was, she did not find the time allowed for each
+instruction at all superfluously long, and did not wish to let it slip
+away in mere talk.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+It was only occasionally that Mariquita accompanied Sarella when the
+latter went to the convent for instruction. On one of those occasions
+the Loretto Convent near Denver was mentioned, and Sister Aquinas said:
+
+"I had a niece there a few years ago--Eleanor Hurst. I wonder if you
+know her?"
+
+"Oh, yes! Quite well." Mariquita answered, with the sort of shining
+interest that always made her look suddenly younger. "A friend of ours
+brought me news, lately, that she has become a Carmelite."
+
+"What is a Carmelite?" Sarella asked.
+
+"A nun of one of the great Contemplative Orders," Sister Aquinas
+explained, turning politely to Sarella. "It is a much rarer vocation
+than that of active nuns, like ourselves. Carmelites do not teach
+school, or have orphanages, or homes for broken old men or women, nor
+nurse the sick, either in their homes or in hospital."
+
+"Sounds pretty useless," Sarella remarked carelessly; "what do they do
+anyway?"
+
+"They are not at all useless," the nun answered, smiling good-humoredly.
+"Married women are not useless, though they do not do any of those
+things either."
+
+"Of course not. But they _are_ married. They make their husbands
+comfortable--"
+
+The nun could not help taking her own turn of interrupting, and said
+with a little laugh:
+
+"Not quite always, perhaps."
+
+"The good ones do."
+
+"Perhaps not invariably. Some even pious women are not remarkable for
+making their husbands comfortable."
+
+Sarella laughed, and the elderly nun went on.
+
+"Of course, it is the vocation of married women to do as you say. And I
+hope most do it, that and setting the example of happy Christian homes.
+I do not really mean to judge of the vocation by those who fail to
+fulfill it. It is God's vocation for the vast majority of His daughters.
+But not for all."
+
+"There aren't husbands enough for all of us," Sarella, who was
+"practical" and slightly statistical, remarked, with the complacence of
+one for whom a husband had been forthcoming.
+
+"Exactly," agreed the elderly nun, laughing cheerfully, "so it's a good
+thing, you see, that there are other vocations; ours, for instance."
+
+"Oh," Sarella protested with hasty politeness, "no one could think
+people like you useless. You do so much good."
+
+"So do the Carmelites. Only their way of it is not quite the same. Would
+you say that Shakespeare was useless, or Dante?"
+
+To tell truth, Sarella had never in her life said anything about either,
+or thought anything. Nevertheless, she was aware that they were
+considered important.
+
+"They did not," the nun said eagerly, "teach schools, or nurse the sick,
+or do any of those things for the sake of which some people kindly
+forgive us for being nuns--not all people, unfortunately. Yet they are
+recognized as not having been useless. They are not useless now, long
+after they are dead. Mankind admits its debt to them. They _served_, and
+they serve still. Not with physical service, like nurses, or doctors, or
+cooks, or house-servants. But they contributed to the _quality_ of the
+human race. So have many great men and women who never wrote a
+line--Joan of Arc, for instance. The contribution of those illustrious
+servants was eminent and famous, but many who have never been famous,
+who never have been known, have contributed in a different degree or
+fashion to the quality of mankind: innumerable priests, unknown perhaps
+outside their parishes; innumerable nuns, innumerable wives and mothers;
+and a Carmelite nun so contributes, eminently, immeasurably except by
+God, though invisibly, and inaudibly. Not only by her prayers, I mean
+her prayers of intercession, though again it is only God who can measure
+what she does by them. But just by being what she is, vast, unknown
+numbers of people are brought into the Catholic Church not only by her
+prayers but by her life. Some read themselves into the true faith, into
+_any_ faith; they are very few in comparison of those who come to
+believe. Some are preached into the Church--a few only, again, compared
+with the number of those who do come to her. What brings most of those
+who are brought? I believe it is a certain quality that they have become
+aware of in the Catholic Church, that brings the immense majority. The
+young man in the factory, or in the army, in a ship, or on a
+ranch--anywhere--falls into companionship with a Catholic, or with a
+group of Catholics; and in him, or them, he gradually perceives this
+_quality_ which he has never perceived elsewhere. It may be that the
+Catholics he has come to know are not perfect at all. The quality is not
+all of their own earning; it is partly an inheritance: some of it from
+their mothers, some from their sisters, some from their friends; ever so
+much of it from the saints, who contributed it to the air of the Church
+that Catholics breathe. The Contemplatives are contributing it every
+day, and all day long. Each, in her case, behind her grille, is forever
+giving something immeasurable, except by God, to the transcendent
+quality of the Catholic Church. This may be, and mostly is, unsuspected
+by almost all her fellow-creatures; but not unfelt by quite all. A
+Carmelite's convent is mostly in a great city; countless human beings
+pass its walls. They cannot _help_, seeing them, saying to their own
+hearts, 'In there, human creatures, like me, are living unlike me. They
+have given up _everything_--and for no possible reward _here_. Ambition
+cannot account for _any part of it even_. They cannot become anything
+great even in their Church, nor famous; they will die as little known or
+regarded as they live. They can win no popularity. They obtain no
+applause. They are called useless for their pains. They are scolded for
+doing what they do, though they would not be scolded if they were mere
+old-maids who pampered and indulged only themselves. The wicked women of
+this city are less decried than they. They are abused, and they have to
+be content to be abused, remembering that their Master said they must
+be content to fare no better than Himself. It is something above this
+world, that can only be accounted for by another world, and such a
+belief in it as is not proved by those who may try to grab two worlds,
+this one with their right hands, the next with their left. The life
+almost all of us declare impossible here on earth, they are living.'
+Such thoughts as these, broken thoughts, hit full in the face numbers of
+passers-by every day, and how many days are there not in a year--in a
+Carmelite's own lifetime. They are witnesses to Jesus Christ, who cannot
+be explained away. A chaplain told me that nothing pleased his soldiers
+so much as to get him in the midst of a group of them and say, 'Tell us
+about the nuns, Father. Tell us about the Carmelites and the Poor
+Clares--'"
+
+"I knew a girl called Clare," Sarella commented brightly; "she was as
+poor as a church mouse, but she married a widower with no children and a
+_huge_ fortune. I beg your pardon--but the name reminded me of her."
+
+Sister Aquinas laughed gently.
+
+"Well, she was a useful friend to you!"
+
+"Not at all. She never did a hand's turn for anyone. I don't know what
+she would have done if she _hadn't_ married a rich man, she was so
+helpless. But you were saying?"
+
+"Only, that his soldiers loved to hear the chaplain tell them about the
+Contemplative nuns. Nothing interested them more. I am sure it was not
+thrown away on them. It was like showing them a high and lovely place. I
+should think no one can look at a splendid white mountain and not want
+to be climbing. That was all."
+
+Would Sarella ever want to climb? Sister Aquinas did not know, nor do I
+know.
+
+Her eagerness had been, perhaps, partly spurred by other criticism than
+Sarella's; Sarella was not the only one who had told Nelly Hurst's aunt
+that it was a pity the girl had "decided on one of the useless Orders."
+
+That every phase of life approved by the Catholic Church, as the
+Contemplative Orders are, must be useful, Sister Aquinas knew well. And
+it wounded her to hear her niece's high choice belittled. She could not
+help knowing that this belittling was simply a naive confession of
+materialism, and an equally naive expression of human selfishness. We
+approve the vocation of nuns whose work is for our own bodies; we cannot
+easily see the splendor of _direct_ service of God Himself who has no
+material needs of His own. That God's most usual course of Providence
+calls us to serve Him by serving our fellows, we see clearly enough,
+because it suits us to see it; but we are too purblind to perceive that
+even that Service need not in every case be material service, and it
+scandalizes us to remember that God chooses in some instance to be
+served _directly_, not by the service of any creature; because the
+instances are less common, we are shocked when asked to admit that they
+exist. If Christ were still visibly on earth, millions would be
+delighted to feed Him, but it would annoy almost all of us to see even a
+few serving Him by sitting idle at His feet listening. Hardly any of us
+but think Martha was doing more that afternoon at Bethany than her
+sister, and it troubles us that Jesus Christ thought differently. It
+was so easy to sit still and listen--that is why the huge majority of us
+find it impossible, and are angry that here and there a Contemplative
+nun wants to do it.
+
+Of liberty we prattle in every language; and most loudly do they scream
+of it who are most angry that God takes leave to exist, and that many of
+His creatures still refuse to deny His existence; that many admit His
+right to command, and their own obligation to obey. These
+liberty-brawlers would be the first to concede to every woman the
+"inalienable right" to lead a corrupt life, destructive of society, and
+the last to allow to a handful of women out of the world's population
+the right to live a life of spotless whiteness at the immediate feet of
+the Master they love.
+
+Was Sister Aquinas so carried away as to be forgetful that Sarella was
+not the only auditor? Mariquita had listened too.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+
+During these weeks of Sarella's instruction she achieved something which
+to her seemed a greater triumph than her succession of cumulative
+triumphs in the matters of trousseau and of furniture. She persuaded Don
+Joaquin to buy a motor-car!
+
+She would not have succeeded in this attempt but for certain
+circumstances which in reality robbed her success of some of its
+triumph. In the first place, the machine was not a new one; in the
+second, Don Joaquin took it instead of a debt which he did not think
+likely to be paid. Then also he had arrived at the conclusion that so
+many long rides as Sarella's frequent journeys to Maxwell involved, were
+likely to prove costly. They took a good deal out of the horses, even
+without accidents occurring, and an accident had nearly occurred which
+would have very largely reduced the value of one of the best of his
+horses--the one, as it happened, best fitted for carrying a lady.
+Sarella all but let the horse down on a piece of ragged, stony road: Don
+Joaquin being himself at her elbow and watchful, had just succeeded in
+averting the accident; but lover as he was, he was able to see that
+Sarella would never be a horse-woman. She disliked riding, and he was
+not such a tyrant as to insist on her doing a thing she never would do
+well, and had no pleasure in doing. On the whole, he made up his mind
+that it would be more economical to take this second-hand car in
+settlement of a bad debt than continue running frequent risks of injury
+to his horses.
+
+The acquisition of the car made it possible to shorten the period of
+these journeys to Maxwell; it did not require a night's rest, and the
+trip itself was much more rapidly accomplished.
+
+The period of Sarella's instruction was not one of idleness on Gore's
+part, in reference to Mariquita. It seemed to him that he really was
+making some advance. He saw much more of her than used to be the case.
+She was now accustomed to chance meetings with him, or what she took for
+chance meetings, and did not make hasty escape from them, or treat him
+during them with reserve. They were, in fact, friends and almost
+confidential friends; but if Gore had continued as wise as he had been
+when discussing the situation with her father, he would have been able
+to see that it did not amount to more than that; that they were friends
+indeed because Mariquita was wholly free from any suspicion that more
+than that could come of it. She had simply come to a settled opinion
+that he was nice, a kind man, immensely pleasanter as a companion than
+any man she had known before, a trustworthy friend who could tell her of
+much whereof she had been ignorant. She began in a fashion to know "his
+people," too; and he saw with extreme pleasure that she was interested
+in them. That was natural enough. She knew almost nobody; as a grown-up
+woman, had really known none of her own sex till Sarella came; it would
+have been strange if she had not heard with interest about women whose
+portraits were so affectionately drawn for her, who, she could easily
+discern, were pleasant and refined, cheerful, bright, amusing, and kind,
+too; cordial, friendly people.
+
+All the same, Gore's talk of his family did connote a great advance in
+intimacy with Mariquita. He seemed to assume that she might know them
+herself, and she gathered the notion that when he had bought a range,
+some of them would come out and live with him, so that she said nothing
+to contradict a possibility that he had after all only implied. Gore,
+meanwhile, with no suspicion of her idea that his sisters might come out
+to visit him, and noting with great satisfaction that she never
+contradicted his hints and hopes that they might all meet, attached more
+importance to it than he ought. Perhaps he built more hope on this than
+on any one thing besides. He was fully aware that in all their
+intercourse there was no breath of flirtation. But he could not picture
+Mariquita flirting, and did not want to picture it. Meanwhile their
+intercourse was daily growing to an intimacy, or he took it for such.
+He did not sufficiently weigh the fact that of herself she said little.
+She was most ready to be interested in all he told her of himself, his
+previous life, his friends; but of her own real life, which was inward
+and apart from the few events of her experience, she did not speak. This
+did not strike him as reserve, for those who show a warm, friendly
+interest in others do not seem reserved.
+
+Gore never startled her by gallantry or compliments; his sympathy and
+admiration were too respectful for compliment, and a certain instinct
+warned him that gallantry would have perplexed and disconcerted her.
+
+None the less, he believed that he was making progress, and the course
+of it was full of beautiful and happy moments. So things went on, with,
+as Gore thought, sure though not rapid pace. He was too much in earnest
+to risk haste, and also too happy in the present to make blundering
+clutches at the future. Then with brutal suddenness Don Joaquin
+intervened.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+
+He met his daughter and Gore returning to the homestead, Mariquita's
+face bright with friendly interest in all that Gore had been telling
+her, and the young man's certainly not less happy. Don Joaquin was out
+of temper; Sarella and he had had an economic difference and he had been
+aware that she had deceived him.
+
+He barely returned Gore's and Mariquita's greeting, and his brow was
+black. It was not till some time later that he and Gore found themselves
+alone together. Then he said ill-humoredly:
+
+"You and Mariquita were riding this afternoon--a good while, I think."
+
+"It did not seem long to _me_, as you can understand," Gore replied
+smiling, and anxious to ignore the old fellow's bad temper.
+
+"Perhaps it does not seem long to you since you began to speak of
+marrying my daughter."
+
+"I did not begin to speak of it. I should have preferred to hold my
+tongue till I could feel I had some right to speak of it. It was you,
+sir, who began."
+
+"And that was a long time ago. Have you yet made my daughter understand
+you?"
+
+"I cannot be sure yet."
+
+"But I must be sure. To-morrow I shall see that she understands."
+
+Gore was aghast.
+
+"I earnestly beg you to abstain from doing that," he begged, too anxious
+to prevent Don Joaquin's interference to risk precipitating it by
+showing the anger he felt.
+
+"Perhaps you no longer wish to marry her. If so, it would be advisable
+to reduce your intercourse to common civilities--"
+
+"Sir," Gore interrupted, "I cannot allow you to go on putting any case
+founded on such an assumption as that of my no longer wishing to marry
+your daughter. I wish it more every day ..."
+
+The young man had a right to be angry, and he was angry, and perhaps was
+not unwilling to show it. But it was necessary that he should for every
+reason be moderate in letting his resentment appear. To have a loud
+quarrel with a prospective father-in-law is seldom a measure likely to
+help the suitor's wishes.
+
+He in his turn was interrupted.
+
+"Then," said Don Joaquin, "it is time you told her so."
+
+"I do not think so. I think it's _not_ time, and that to tell her so now
+would greatly injure my chance of success."
+
+"I will answer for your success. I shall myself speak to her. I shall
+tell her that you wish to marry her, and that I have, some time ago,
+given my full consent."
+
+Gore was well aware that Don Joaquin could not "answer for his success."
+It was horrible to him to think of Mariquita being bullied, and he was
+sure that her father intended to bully her. Anything would be better
+than that. He was intensely earnest in his wish to succeed; it was that
+earnestness that made him willing to be patient; but he was, if
+possible, even more intensely determined that the poor girl should not
+be tormented and dragooned by her tyrannical father. That, he would
+risk a great deal to prevent, as far as his own power went.
+
+"I most earnestly beg you not to do that," he said in a very low voice.
+
+"But I intend to do it. If you choose to say that you do not, after all,
+wish to marry her, then I will merely suggest that you should leave us."
+
+"I have just told you the exact contrary--"
+
+"Then, I shall tell Mariquita so to-morrow, stating that your proposal
+meets with my full consent, and that in view of her prolonged intimacy
+with you, her consent is taken by me for granted. I do take it for
+granted."
+
+"I wish I could. But I cannot. Sir, I still entreat you to abandon this
+intention of yours."
+
+"Only on condition that you make the proposal yourself without any
+further delay."
+
+From this decision the obstinate old father would not recede. The
+discussion continued for some time, but he seemed to grow only more
+fixed in his intention, and certainly he became more acerbated in
+temper. Gore was sure that if he were allowed to take up the matter with
+his daughter, it would be with even more harshly dictatorial tyranny
+than had seemed probable at first.
+
+Finally Gore promised that he would himself propose to Mariquita in form
+on the morrow, Don Joaquin being with difficulty induced to undertake on
+his side that he would not "prepare" her for what was coming. He gave
+this promise quite as reluctantly as Gore gave his. The younger man
+dreaded the bad effects of precipitancy; the elder, who had plenty of
+self-conceit behind his dry dignity, relinquished very unwillingly the
+advantages he counted upon from his diplomacy, and the weight of his
+authority being known beforehand to be on the suitor's side. If Gore
+were really so uncertain of success, it would be a feather in the
+paternal cap to have insured that success by his solemn indications of
+approval. But he saw that without his promise of absolute abstention
+from interference, Gore would not agree to make his proposal, so Don
+Joaquin ungraciously yielded the point perhaps chiefly because important
+business called him away from the morrow's dawn till late at night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+
+After breakfast next morning Sarella, not quite accidentally, found
+herself alone with Gore.
+
+"You gentlemen," she said, "did go to bed sometime, I suppose. But I
+thought you never _were_ going to stop your talk--and to tell you the
+truth, I wished my bedroom was farther away, or had a thicker wall. _I_
+go to bed to sleep. You were at it two hours and twenty minutes."
+
+Gore duly apologized for the postponement of her sleep, and wondered
+_how_ thin the wooden partition might be between her room and that in
+which the long discussion had taken place.
+
+"These partitions of thin boarding are wretched," she informed him,
+"especially as they are only stained. If they were even papered it would
+prevent the tobacco-smoke coming through the cracks where the boards
+have shrunk." Gore could not help smiling.
+
+"I think," he said, "you want to let me know that our talk was not quite
+inaudible."
+
+"No, it wasn't. Not quite. I'll tell you how much was audible. That you
+were talking about Mariquita, and that you were arguing, and I think you
+were both angry. I am sure _he_ was."
+
+"So was I; though not so loud, I hope."
+
+"Look here, Mr. Gore. You weren't loud at all. But I knew you were
+angry. And so you ought to have been. Why on earth can't he keep his
+fingers out of the pot? You and Mariquita didn't interfere in his love
+affair, and he'll do no good interfering in yours."
+
+Gore laughed.
+
+"So you heard it all!" he said.
+
+"No. If you had talked as loud as he did I should. But you didn't. It
+was easy to hear him say that to-morrow he would go and order Mariquita
+to marry you. If that had been the end of it, I just believe I should
+have dressed myself and come in to tell him not to be silly. But it
+wasn't the end. Was it?"
+
+"No. To stop _that_ plan I promised I would propose to Mariquita
+to-day--only he was to say nothing about it to her first."
+
+"Well, then, I don't know as he has done any harm. You might do worse."
+
+"I might do better."
+
+"What better?"
+
+"Wait a bit."
+
+"I'm not so sure. I don't know that any _harm_ would come of waiting a
+bit, and I daresay it's all very pleasant meanwhile. But you can go on
+with your love-making after you're engaged just as well as before."
+
+"Ah! If we _were_ engaged!"
+
+"Pfush!" quoth Sarella, inventing a word which stood her in stead of
+"Pshaw."
+
+Gore had to laugh again, and no doubt her good-natured certainty
+encouraged him--albeit he did not believe she knew Mariquita.
+
+"What o'clock shall you propose?" she inquired coolly.
+
+Of course he could not tell her.
+
+"I guess," she said, "it will be between two and three. Dinner at
+twelve. Digestion and preliminaries, 12:45 to 1:45. Proposal 2:45 say.
+You will be engaged by 2:50."
+
+As before, Gore liked the encouragement though very largely discounting
+its worth.
+
+"On the whole," Sarella observed, "I daresay my old man has done
+good--as he has made himself scarce. If he hadn't threatened to put his
+own foot in it, you might have gone on staring up at Mariquita in the
+stars till she was forty, and then it might have struck you that you
+could get on fine without her."
+
+Sarella evidently thought that nothing was to be done before the time
+she had indicated; during the morning she was in evidence as usual, but
+immediately after dinner she retreated to her studies, and was seen no
+more for a long time.
+
+Gore boldly announced his intention to be idle and told Mariquita she
+must be idle too, begging her to ride with him. To himself it seemed as
+if everyone about the place must see that something was in the wind; but
+the truth was that everyone had been so long expecting something
+definite to happen without hearing of it, that some of them had decided
+that Gore and Mariquita had fixed up their engagement already at some
+unsuspected moment, and the rest had almost ceased to expect to hear
+anything.
+
+As to Mariquita, she was clearly unsuspicious that this afternoon was to
+have any special significance for her. Always cheerful and
+unembarrassed, she was exactly her usual self, untroubled by the
+faintest presentiment of fateful events. Her ready agreement to Gore's
+proposal that they should ride together was, he knew well, of no real
+good omen. It made him have a guilty feeling, as if he were getting her
+out under false pretences.
+
+There was so happy a light of perfect, confiding friendliness upon her
+face that it seemed almost impossible to cloud it by the suggestion of
+anything that would be different from simple friendship. But must it be
+clouded by such a suggestion? "Clouding" means darkening; was it really
+impossible for that light, so trusting and so contented, of
+unquestioning friendship, to be changed without being rendered less
+bright? Must Gore assume her to be specially incapable of an affection
+deeper than even friendship? No; of anything good she was capable; no
+depths of love could be beyond her, and he was sure that her nature was
+one of deep affectionateness, left unclaimed till now. The real
+loneliness of her life, he told himself, had lain in this very depth of
+unclaimed lovingness. And he told himself, too, not untruly, that she
+had been less lonely of late.
+
+Gore might, he felt, hope to awake all that dormant treasure of
+affection--if he had time! But he had no longer time. He did truly,
+though not altogether, shrink from the task he had set himself to-day.
+He had a genuine reluctance to risk spoiling that happy content of hers;
+yet he could not say it was worse than a risk. There was the counter
+possibility of that happy content changing into something lovelier.
+
+That she was not incapable of love he told himself with full assurance,
+and he was half-disposed to believe that she was one who would never
+love till asked for her love.
+
+Sarella might be nearer right than he had been. She was of much coarser
+fibre than Mariquita, and perhaps he had made too much of that, for she
+was a woman at all events, and shrewd, watchful and a looker-on with the
+proverbial advantages (maybe) over the actors themselves. Sarella knew
+how Mariquita spoke of him, though he did not believe that between the
+two cousins there had been confidences about himself; not real
+confidences, though Sarella was just the girl to "chaff" Mariquita about
+himself, and would know how her chaff had been taken. At all events, Don
+Joaquin must be forestalled; his blundering interference must be
+prevented, and it could only be prevented by Gore keeping his word and
+speaking himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+
+He had kept his word, and had spoken. They had been out together a long
+time when the opportunity came; they had dismounted, and the horses were
+resting. He and she were sitting in the shade of a small group of trees,
+to two of which the horses were tied. Their talk had turned naturally,
+and with scarcely any purposeful guidance of his, in a direction that
+helped him. And Mariquita talked with frank unreserve; she felt at home
+with him now, and her natural silence had long before now been melted by
+his sincerity; her silence of habit was _chiefly_ habit, due not to
+distrust nor a guarded prudence, but to the much simpler fact that till
+his arrival, she had never since her home-coming been called upon to
+speak in any real sense by anyone who cared to hear her, or who had an
+interest in what she might have to say.
+
+His proposal did not come with the least abruptness, but it was clear
+and unmistakeable when it came, and she understood--Mariquita could
+understand a plain meaning as well as anyone. She did not interrupt, nor
+avert her gaze. Indeed, she turned her eyes, which had been looking far
+away across the lovely, empty prairie to the horizon, to him as he
+spoke, and her hands ceased their idle pulling at the grass beside her.
+In her eyes, as she listened, there was a singular shining, and
+presently they held a glistening like the dew in early morning flowers.
+
+Gore had not moved any nearer to her, nor did he as he ceased. One hand
+of hers she moved nearer to him, now, though not so as to touch him.
+
+"That is what you want?" she said. "Is that what you have been wanting
+all the time?"
+
+Her voice was rather low, but most clear, and it had no reproach.
+
+"Yes. What can you say to me?"
+
+"I can only say how grateful it makes me."
+
+Her words almost astonished him. Though he might have known that she
+must say only exactly what was in her mind. They conveyed in themselves
+no refusal, but he knew at once there was no hope for him in them.
+
+"Grateful!" He exclaimed. "As if I could help it!"
+
+"And as if I could help being grateful. It is so great a thing! For you
+to wish that. There could be nothing greater. I can never forget it. You
+must never think that I could forget it ... I--you know, Mr. Gore, that
+I am not like most girls, being so very ignorant. I have never read a
+novel. Even the nuns told me that some of them are beautiful and not bad
+at all, but the contrary. Only, I have never read any. I know they are
+full of this matter--love and marriage. They are great things, and
+concern nearly all the men and women in the world, but not quite all. I
+do not think I ever said to myself, 'They don't concern _you_.' I do not
+think I ever thought about it, but if I had, I believe I should have
+known that that matter would never concern me. Yet I do not want you to
+misunderstand--Oh, if I could make you understand, please! I know that
+it is a great thing, love and marriage, God's way for most men and
+women. And I think it a wonderful, great thing that a man should wish
+that for himself and me; should think that with me he could be happier
+than in any other way. Of course, I never thought anyone would feel
+that. It is a thing to thank you for, and always I shall thank you...."
+
+"Is it impossible?"
+
+She paused an infinitesimal moment and said:
+
+"Just that. Impossible."
+
+"Would it be fair to ask why 'impossible'?"
+
+"Not unfair at all. But perhaps I cannot answer. I will try to answer.
+When you told me what you wanted it pleased me because you wanted it,
+and it hurt me because I (who had never thought about it before) knew at
+once that it was not possible to do what you wanted, and I would so much
+rather be able to please you."
+
+"You will never be able to do anything else but please me. Your refusing
+cannot change your being yourself."
+
+Gore could not worry her with demands for reasons. He knew there was no
+one else. He knew she was not incapable of loving--for he knew, better
+than ever, that she loved greatly and deeply all whom she knew. Nay, he
+knew that she loved _him_, among them, but more than any of them. And
+yet he saw that she was simply right. What he had asked was "impossible,
+just that." Better than himself she would love no one, and in the
+fashion of a wife she would love no one, ever.
+
+Yet, he asked her a question, not to harry her but because of her
+father. "Perhaps you have resolved never to marry," he said.
+
+"I never thought of it. But, as soon as I knew what you were saying, I
+knew I should never marry anyone. It was not a resolution. It was just a
+certainty. Alas! our resolutions are not certainties."
+
+"But," Gore said gently, feeling it necessary to prepare her, "your
+father may wish you to marry."
+
+She paused, dubiously, and her brown skin reddened a little.
+
+"You think so? Yes, he may," she answered in a troubled voice; for she
+feared her father, more even than she was conscious of.
+
+"I think he does," Gore said, not watching the poor girl's troubled
+face.
+
+"He wants me to marry you?" she inquired anxiously.
+
+"I am afraid so; ever since he made up his mind. I do not think he liked
+the idea of letting you marry me till long after he saw what I hoped
+for. You see, I began to hope for it from the very first--from the day
+when we first met, by the river. He did not like me then; he did not
+know whether to approve of me or not. And at first he was inclined to
+approve all the less because he saw I wanted to win you for myself. I
+don't know that he likes me much even now; but he approves, and he
+approves of my plan. You know that once he has made up his mind to
+approve a plan, he likes it more and more. He gets determined and
+obstinate about it."
+
+"Yes. He will be angry."
+
+"I am afraid so. But--it is because he thinks it a father's duty to
+arrange for his daughter's future, and this plan suited him."
+
+"Oh, yes! I know he is a good man. He will feel he is right in being
+angry."
+
+"But I don't. He will be wrong. Though he is your father, he has not the
+right to try and force you to do what you say is impossible."
+
+"Yes," she said gently, "it is impossible. But I shall not be able to
+make him see that."
+
+"I see it. And it concerns me more than it concerns him."
+
+"You are more kind than anyone I ever heard of," she told him. "I never
+dared to hope you would come to see that--that it is impossible."
+
+"Can you tell him why?"
+
+"Perhaps I do not quite understand you."
+
+"It seems a long time ago, now, to me since I asked you if you could
+come to love me and be my wife. Everything seems changed and different.
+I wonder if I could guess why you knew instantly that it was
+impossible. It might help you with your father."
+
+Mariquita listened, and gave no prohibition.
+
+"I think," he said, "you knew it was impossible, because my words taught
+you, if you did not know already, that you could be no man's wife--"
+
+"Oh, yes! That is true."
+
+"But perhaps they taught you also something else, which you may not have
+known before--that you could belong only to God."
+
+"I have known that always," she answered simply.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+
+When Don Joaquin returned, he was in an unusually bad temper, and it was
+well that Mariquita had gone to bed. Gore was sitting up, and, though it
+was long past Sarella's usual hour, she had insisted on sitting up also.
+This was good-natured of her, for there was no pleasure to be
+anticipated from the interview with Don Joaquin, and she disliked any
+derangement of her habits. Gore had begged her to retire at her ordinary
+hour, but she had flatly refused.
+
+"I can do more with him than you can," she declared, quite truly,
+"though no one will be able to stop his being as savage as a bear. I'm
+sorry for Mariquita; she'll have a bad time to-morrow, and it won't end
+with to-morrow."
+
+Meanwhile she took the trouble to have ready a good supper for Don
+Joaquin, and made rather a special toilette in which to help him to it.
+Sarella was not in the least afraid of him, and had no great dread of a
+row which concerned someone else. Don Joaquin was not, however,
+particularly mollified by the becoming dress, nor by finding his
+betrothed sitting up for him, as she was sitting up with Gore.
+
+"Where's Mariquita?" he asked, as he sat down to eat.
+
+"In bed long ago. I hope you'll like that chicken; it's done in a
+special way we have, and the recipe's my patent. I haven't taught it to
+Mariquita."
+
+"Why aren't _you_ in bed?"
+
+"Because I preferred waiting to see you safe at home," Sarella replied
+with an entrancing smile.
+
+"Was Mr. Gore anxious too?" Don Joaquin demanded sarcastically.
+
+"It is not a quarter of an hour later than my usual time for going to
+bed," Gore answered. "And I thought it better to see you; you would, I
+believe, have _expected_ to see me."
+
+"Very well. You have done as you said?"
+
+"Yes." Gore glanced at Sarella, and Don Joaquin told her that she had
+now better sit up no longer.
+
+"_I_ think I had," she told him; "I know all about it."
+
+"Is it all settled?" Don Joaquin asked, looking at Gore. "Have you fixed
+it up?"
+
+Gore found this abruptness and haste made his task very difficult.
+
+He had to consider how to form his reply.
+
+"He proposed to Mariquita," Sarella cut in, "but she refused him."
+
+"Refused him!" Don Joaquin almost shouted.
+
+"Unfortunately, it is so," Gore was beginning, but his host interrupted
+him.
+
+"I do not choose she should refuse," he said angrily. "I will tell her
+so before you see her in the morning."
+
+Gore was angry himself, and rose from his seat.
+
+"No," he said; "I will not agree to that. She knows her own mind, and it
+will not change. You must not persecute her on my account."
+
+"It is not on your account. I choose to have duty and obedience from my
+own daughter."
+
+"Joaquin," said Sarella (Gore had never before heard her call him by his
+Christian name), "it is no use taking it that way. Mariquita is not
+undutiful, and you must know it. But she will not marry Mr. Gore--or
+anybody."
+
+"Of course she will marry," cried the poor girl's father fiercely. "That
+is the duty of every girl."
+
+Sarella slightly smiled.
+
+"Then many girls do not do their duty," she said, in her even,
+unimpassioned tones.
+
+Her elderly _fiance_ was about to burst into another explosion, but she
+would not let him.
+
+"Many Catholic girls," she reminded him, "remain unmarried."
+
+"To be nuns--that is different."
+
+"It is my belief," she observed in a detached manner, as if indulging in
+a mere surmise, "that Mariquita will be a nun."
+
+"Mariquita! Has she said so?" he demanded sharply.
+
+"Not to me," Sarella replied, quite unconcernedly.
+
+"Nor to me," Gore explained; "nevertheless, I believe it will be so."
+
+"That depends on _me_," the girl's father asserted with an unpleasant
+mixture of annoyance and obstinacy. "I intend her to marry."
+
+"Only a Protestant," said Sarella, with a shrewd understanding of Don
+Joaquin that surprised Gore, "would marry her if she believes she has a
+vocation to be a nun. I should think a Catholic man would be ashamed to
+do it. He would expect a judgment on himself and his children."
+
+Don Joaquin was as angry as ever, as savage as ever, but he was
+startled. Both his companions could see this. Gore was astonished at
+Sarella's speech, and at her acumen. He had wished to have this
+interview with Mariquita's father to himself, but already saw that
+Sarella knew how to conduct it better than he did. She had clearly been
+quite willing that "the old man" (as he disrespectfully called him in
+his own mind) should fly out and give way to his fiery temper at once;
+the more of it went off now, the less would remain for poor Mariquita to
+endure.
+
+"If I were a Catholic man," Sarella continued cooly, "I should think it
+_profane_ to make a girl marry me who had given herself to be a nun. I
+expect the Lord would punish it." She paused meditatively, and then
+added, "and all who joined in pushing her to it. I know _I_ wouldn't
+join. I think folks have enough of their own to answer for, without
+bringing judgments down on their heads for things like that. It won't
+get me to heaven to help in interfering between Mariquita and her way of
+getting there."
+
+All the while she spoke, Sarella seemed to be admiring, with her head
+turned on one side, the prettiness of her left wrist on which was a gold
+bangle, with a crystal heart dangling from it. Don Joaquin had given her
+the bangle, and himself admired the heart chiefly because it was crystal
+and not of diamonds.
+
+"Isn't it pretty?" she said, looking suddenly up and catching his eye
+watching her.
+
+"I thought you hadn't cared much for it," he answered, greatly pleased.
+He had always known _she_ would have preferred a smaller heart if
+crusted with diamonds.
+
+Gore longed to laugh. She astonished and puzzled him. Her cleverness was
+a revelation to him, and her good-nature, her subtlety, and her
+earnestness--for he knew she had been in earnest in what she said about
+not daring to interfere with other people's ways of getting to heaven.
+
+"That old man who instructs her," he thought, "must have taught her a
+lot."
+
+Of course, on his own account, he was no more afraid of Don Joaquin than
+she was. But he had been terribly afraid of the hard old man on
+Mariquita's, and he was deeply grateful to Sarella.
+
+"Sir," he said, "what she has said to you I do feel myself. I am a
+Catholic--and the dearest of my sisters is a nun. I should have hated
+and despised any man who had tried to spoil her life by snatching it to
+himself against her will. He would have to be a wicked fellow, and
+brutal, and impious. God's curse would lie on him. So it would on me if
+I did that hideous thing, though God knows to-day has brought me the
+great disappointment of my life. Life can never be for me what I have
+been hoping it might be. Never."
+
+Sarella, listening, and knowing that the two men were looking at each
+other, smiled at her bangle, and softly shook the dangling heart to make
+the crystal give as diamond-like a glitter as possible. Gore's life, she
+thought, would come all right. She had done her best valorously for
+Mariquita; women, in her theory, behooved to do their best for each
+other against masculine tyrrany ("bossishness," she called it), but all
+the time she was half-savage, herself, with the girl for not being
+willing to be happy in so obviously comfortable a way as offered. It
+seemed to her "wasteful" that so pretty a girl should go and be a nun;
+if she had been "homely" like Sister Aquinas it would have been
+different. But Sarella had learned from Sister Aquinas that these
+matters were above her, and was quite content to accept them without
+understanding them.
+
+"Ever since I came here," Gore was saying, "I have lived in a dream of
+what life would be--if I could join hers with mine. It was only a dream,
+and I had to awake."
+
+Don Joaquin did not understand his mind, but he was able now to see that
+the young man suffered, and had received a blow that, somehow, _would_
+change his life, and turn its course aside.
+
+"Anything," Gore said, in a very low, almost thankful tone, "is better
+than it would have been if I had changed my dream for a nightmare; it
+would have been that, if I had to think of myself as trying to pull her
+down, from her level to mine, of her as having been brought down. I
+meant to do her all possible good, all my life long. How can I wish to
+have done her the greatest harm? As it would have been if, out of fear
+or over-persuasion, she had been brought to call herself my wife who
+could be no man's wife."
+
+("_How_ he loves her!" thought Sarella.)
+
+("I doubt it has wrecked him a bit," thought Don Joaquin.)
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+
+Mariquita awoke early to see Sarella entering her room, and it surprised
+her, for her cousin was not fond of leaving her bed betimes.
+
+"Oh, I'm going back to bed again," Sarella explained. "We were up to all
+hours. Of course, your father made a rumpus."
+
+Mariquita heard this with less surprise than concern. It really grieved
+her to displease him.
+
+"He has very queer old-fashioned notions," Sarella remarked, settling
+herself comfortably on Mariquita's bed, "and thinks it's his business to
+arrange all your affairs for you. Besides, you know by this time that
+any plan he has been hatching he expects to hatch out, and not to help
+him seems to him most undutiful and shocking."
+
+"But I _can't_ help him in this plan of his," Mariquita pleaded
+unhappily.
+
+"I suppose not. Well, he flared out, and I was glad you were in bed.
+Gore behaved very well. It's a thousand pities you can't like him."
+
+"But I do like him. I like him better than any man I ever knew."
+
+"Oh, yes! Better than the cowboys or the old chaplain at Loretto.
+_That's_ no good."
+
+All this Sarella intended as medicinal; Mariquita, she thought, ought to
+have _some_ of the chill of the late storm. She was not entitled to
+immediate and complete relief from suspense. But Sarella was beginning
+to feel a little chill about the legs herself, and did not care to risk
+a cold, so she abbreviated her disciplinary remarks a little.
+
+"I'm a good stepmother," she remarked complacently, "not at all like one
+in a novel. I took your part."
+
+"Did you!" Mariquita cried gratefully; "it was very, very kind of you."
+
+"I don't approve of men having things all their own way--whether fathers
+or husbands. He has been knocked under to too much. Yes, I took your
+part, and made him understand that if he kept the row up he'd have
+three of us against him."
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+"All sorts of things. Never mind. Perhaps Mr. Gore will tell you--only
+he won't. He said a lot of things too. We made your father think he
+would be wicked if he went on bullying you."
+
+Of course, Mariquita did not understand how this had been effected.
+
+"He would not do anything wicked," she said; "he is a very good man."
+
+"He'd be a very good mule," Sarella observed coolly, considerably
+scandalizing Mariquita.
+
+"You'd have found him a pretty unpleasant one, if Gore and I had left
+you to manage him yourself." Sarella added, entirely unmoved by her
+cousin's shocked look. "We managed him. He won't beat you now. But you'd
+better keep out of his way as much as you can for a bit. If I were you,
+I'd have a bad headache and stop in bed."
+
+"But I haven't a headache. I never do have headaches."
+
+Sarella made a queer face, and sighed, then laughed.
+
+"Anyway, you're not to be made to marry Mr. Gore," she said.
+
+Mariquita looked enormously relieved, and began to express her grateful
+sense of Sarella's good offices.
+
+"For that matter," Sarella cut in, "neither will Mr. Gore be made to
+marry _you_--so if you change your mind it will be no good. He thinks it
+would be wicked to marry you."
+
+Mariquita perfectly understood that Sarella was trying to make her
+sorry, and only gave a cheerful little laugh.
+
+"Then," she said, "I shall certainly not ask him. It would be quite
+useless to ask him to do anything wicked."
+
+"The fact is," Sarella told her, "that you and he ought to be put in a
+glass case--two glass cases, you'd both of you be quite shocked at the
+idea of being in _one_--and labelled. It's a good thing you're unique.
+If other lovers were like you two, there'd be no marriages."
+
+She got up, and prepared to return to her own room.
+
+"Hulloa!" she said, "there's the auto. Your father's going off
+somewhere, and you can get up. Probably he is taking Gore away."
+
+"Is Mr. Gore going away?"
+
+"He'll have to. There's no one here for him to marry except Ginger; but
+no doubt you want him to become a monk."
+
+"A monk! He hasn't the least idea of such a thing."
+
+"Oh, dear!" sighed Sarella, instantly changing the sigh into a laugh.
+"How funny you people are who never condescend to see a joke."
+
+"I didn't know," Mariquita confessed meekly, "that you had made one."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+
+Don Joaquin was not yet recovered from his annoyance. As Sarella had
+perceived, he could not easily condone the defective conduct of those
+who, owing him obedience, refused to carry out a plan that he had long
+been meditating. But he had been frightened by the picture she had
+suggested of Divine judgment, and wondered if the hitches that had
+occurred in the issue of the dispensation for his marriage had been a
+hint of them--a threatening of what would happen if he opposed the
+Heavenly Will concerning his daughter's vocation. It was chiefly because
+the plan of her marriage had been deliberately adopted by himself, that
+he was reluctant to abandon it. Her own plan of becoming a nun would, he
+gradually came to see, suit him quite as well. And presently he became
+aware that, financially, it would suit him even better. If she "entered
+Religion," he would have to give her a dowry; but not, he imagined, a
+large one, five thousand dollars or so, he guessed. Whereas, if she
+married Gore, he would be expected to give her much more. Besides, her
+marriage would very likely involve subsequent gifts and expenditure. It
+would all come out of what he wished to save for the beloved son of whom
+he was always thinking. As a nun, too, Mariquita would be largely
+engaged in praying for the soul of her mother, and for his own soul and
+Sarella's and her brother's.
+
+By the time he and Mariquita met he had grasped all these advantages,
+and, though aloof and disapproving in his manner, he did not attack her.
+
+As it pleased him to admire in Sarella a delightful shrewdness in
+affairs, he gave her credit for favoring Mariquita's plan because it
+would leave more money for her own children. In this he paid her an
+undeserved compliment, for Sarella did not know in the least that
+Mariquita would receive less of her father's money if she became a nun
+than if she married Mr. Gore. She had not thought of it, being much of
+opinion that Gore would ask for nothing in the way of dowry and that Don
+Joaquin would give nothing without much asking.
+
+Don Joaquin was considerably taken aback to learn that Mariquita had
+formed no definite plans yet as to her "entering Religion." He had
+promptly decided that, of course, she would go back to Loretto as a nun,
+and he was proportionally surprised to find that she had no such idea.
+This surprise he expressed, almost in dudgeon, to Sarella. He appeared
+to consider himself quite ill-used by such vagueness; if young women
+wanted to be nuns it behooved them to know exactly where they meant to
+go, and what religious work they felt called to undertake.
+
+"If I were you," Sarella told him, after some hasty consideration, "I
+would let her go to Loretto--on a visit. You will find she makes up her
+mind quicker there--with nothing to distract her. Sister Aquinas talks
+of Retreats--Mariquita could make one."
+
+"Who's to do the work here while she's away?" grumbled Don Joaquin.
+
+"It will have to be done when she's gone for good. We may just as well
+think it out."
+
+Sarella was quite resolved that she would never be the slave Mariquita
+had been, and did not mind having the struggle, if there was to be one,
+now.
+
+"Whether Mariquita married or became a nun," she went on, "she would be
+gone from here. Her place would have to be supplied--more than supplied,
+for a young wife like me could not do nearly so much work. I should have
+things to do an unmarried girl has not, and be unfit for much work. I am
+sure you understand that. Sister Aquinas knows two sisters, very
+respectable and trustworthy, steady, and not too young. I meant to speak
+to you about them. They would suit us as well. They will not separate,
+and for that matter, we can't do with less than two."
+
+Sarella's great object was to open the matter; she intended to succeed
+but did not count on instant success, or success without a struggle. Don
+Joaquin had to be familiarized with a scheme some time before he would
+adopt it. He rebelled at first and for that rebellion she punished him.
+
+"Mariquita's position was wrong," she told him boldly. "It tended to
+make her unlike other girls and give her unusual ideas. She was tied by
+the leg here, by too much work, and her only rest or recreation was
+solitary thinking. If she had been taken about and met her equals she
+would have been like other girls, I expect. She was a slave and sought
+her freedom in the skies."
+
+Don Joaquin enjoyed this philippic very little; perhaps he only partly
+understood it, but he did understand that Sarella thought Mariquita had
+been put upon and did not intend being put upon herself. He would have
+been much less influenced if he had thought of Sarella as specially
+devoted to his daughter or blindly fond of her, but he had always
+believed that there was but a cool sympathy between the two girls, and
+that Sarella would have found fault with Mariquita quite willingly if
+there had been fault to find.
+
+"You have taken up the cudgels," he said sourly, "very strongly for
+Mariquita of late."
+
+"As time goes on I naturally feel able to speak more plainly than I
+could when I first came here. I was only your guest. It is different 'of
+late.' And I am 'taking up the cudgels' for myself more than for
+Mariquita."
+
+"Oh, I quite see that," he retorted with a savage grin.
+
+Sarella determined to hit back, and she was by no means restrained by
+scruples as to "hitting below the belt."
+
+"Fortunately for her," she said, "Mariquita has splendid health, and
+work did not kill her. She has the strength of a horse. Her mother did
+not leave it to her. I have always heard in the family that Aunt
+Margaret was delicate, physically unfit for hard work. Men do not notice
+those things. She died too young, and might have lived much longer if
+she had not overtaxed her strength. She ought to have been prevented
+from doing so much work. You were not too poor to have allowed her
+plenty of help--and you are much better off now."
+
+Don Joaquin almost jumped with horror; he had really adored his wife,
+and now he was being flatly and relentlessly accused of having perhaps
+shortened her life by lack of consideration for her. And was it true? He
+could not help remembering much to support the accusation. She had been
+a woman of feeble health and feeble temper; her singular beauty of
+feature and coloring had been in every eye but Joaquin's own, marred by
+an expression of discontent and complaining, though she had been too
+much in awe of her masterful husband to set out her grievances to him;
+he guessed now that she must have written grumbling letters to her
+relations far away in the East. The man was no monster of cruelty; he
+was merely stingy and money-loving, hard-natured, and without
+imagination. Possessed of iron health himself, he had never conceived
+that the sort of work his Indian mother had submissively performed could
+be beyond the strength of his wife. It was true that he was much richer
+now than he had been when he married, and Sarella had herself
+accustomed him to the idea of greater expenditure, however dexterously
+he might have done his best to neutralize those spendings. He was more
+obstinately set upon marrying her than ever, because he had for a long
+time now decided upon the marriage; he was nervously afraid of her
+drawing back if he didn't yield to her wishes, the utterance of which he
+took to be a sort of ultimatum.
+
+"Are these two women Catholics?" he demanded, feeling sure that Sister
+Aquinas would only recommend such; "I will not have Protestant servants
+in the house."
+
+"They are excellent Catholics," Sarella assured him, "educated in the
+convent."
+
+"Then I will consider the plan. You can ask Sister Aquinas about the
+conditions--wages, and so forth."
+
+"What a pity," thought Sarella, when the interview had ended, "that
+Mariquita never knew how to manage him."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+
+There was no pomp of leave-taking about Mariquita's departure for
+Loretto. She was only going on a visit, and would return.
+
+"Whatever you decide upon," Sarella insisted, "you must come back for
+your father's wedding."
+
+Mariquita promised, and went away, her father driving her all the way to
+Loretto in the auto. Her departure did not move him much, though he
+would have been better pleased, after all, if she were going away to a
+husband's house. Sarella, watching them disappear in the distance, felt
+it more than the stoical old half-breed.
+
+"I shall miss her," she said to herself; "I like her better than I
+thought I should. She's as straight as an arrow, and as true as gold. I
+suppose this watch _is_ gold; he'd never dare to give me _rolled_
+gold.... Only nine o'clock. It will be a long day, and I shall miss her
+all the time. Quiet as she is, it will make a lot of difference. No one
+has such a nice way of laughing, when she does laugh. I wonder if she
+guesses how little her father cares? _He_ won't miss her much. Some men
+care never a pin for a woman unless they want to marry her. _He_ has no
+use for the others. I expect it makes them good husbands, though. Poor
+Mariquita! I think I should have hated him if I had been her. It never
+occurred to her; at first I thought she must be an A-Number-One
+hypocrite, she seemed to think him so exactly all that he ought to be to
+her. Then I thought she must be stupid--I soon saw she was as sincere as
+a baby. But she's not stupid either. She's just Mariquita; she really
+does see only the things she ought to see, and it's queer. I never saw
+anyone else that way. I thought at first she _must_ be jealous of me,
+the old man put her so completely on one side, and made such a lot of
+me. Any other girl would have been. I soon saw she wasn't; it never
+entered her head that he might leave me money that ought to be hers--it
+would have entered mine, I know. But 'she never thought of that,' as she
+used to say about everything." Oddly enough, it was at this particular
+recollection that a certain dewy brightness (that became them well)
+glistened in Sarella's pretty eyes.
+
+"Well," she thought, "I'm glad I can call to mind that I did the best I
+could for her. It made me feel just sick to think of the old man
+brow-beating and bullying her. I saw a big hulking fellow beat his
+little girl once, and I felt just the same, only I could _do_ nothing
+then but scream. I was a child myself, and I did scream, and I bit him.
+I'm glad I did bite him, though I was spanked for it. I suppose I'll
+have to confess biting him, though I don't call it a sin. What on earth
+can Mariquita confess? At first her goodness put my back up. But I wish
+she was back. It never occurs to her that she's good. I soon found that
+out. And she thinks everyone else as good as gold. She thinks all these
+cowboys good, and she does almost make them want to be. It was funny
+that she didn't dislike me. (_I_ should have if I'd been in her place.)
+When she kissed me good-bye and said 'Sarella, we'll never forget each
+other,' it meant more than pounds of candy-talk from another girl.
+Forget her! Not I. Will Gore? He will never think any other girl her
+equal. Mrs. Gore may make up her mind to that. Perhaps he'll marry
+someone not half so good as himself and rather like it. Pfush! It feels
+lonesome now. I often used to get into my own room to get out of
+Mariquita's way, and stretch the legs of my mind over a novel. I wish
+she was here now...."
+
+And Sarella did not speedily give over missing Mariquita. She was a girl
+who on principle preferred men's society to that of other women, but in
+practice had considerable need of female companionship. She liked to
+make men admire her, but she did not much care to be admired by the
+cowboys, and took it for granted that they already admired her as much
+as befitted their inferior position. She had always been too shrewd to
+try and make other women admire her, but she liked talking to them about
+clothes, which no man understands; and, though Mariquita had been
+careless about her own sumptuous affairs, she had been a wonderfully
+appreciative (or long-suffering) listener when Sarella talked about
+hers.
+
+"And after all," Sarella confessed, "she had taste. My style would not
+have suited her. That plain style of her own was best for her."
+
+When Don Joaquin returned from Denver he seemed unlike himself, almost
+subdued. He had been much impressed by the great convent and its large
+community; the nuns had made much of him, and of Mariquita. They spoke
+in a way that at last put it into his head that he had under-valued her;
+there is nothing for awaking our appreciation of our own near relations
+like the sudden perception that other people think greatly of them.
+Gore's respect and admiration for his daughter had not done much, for he
+had only looked upon it as the blind predilection of a young man in love
+with a beautiful girl. Several of the nuns, including their Reverend
+Mother, had spoken to him apart, in Mariquita's absence, not
+immediately on his and her arrival, but on the evening of the following
+day; on the morrow he was to depart on his return to the range, and in
+these conversations the Sisters let him plainly see that they regarded
+the girl as peculiarly graced by God, and of rarely high and noble
+character.
+
+He asked the Superior if she thought Mariquita would wish to stay with
+them and become one of themselves.
+
+"No," was the answer. "She is a born Contemplative. Every nun must be a
+contemplative in some degree, but I use the word in its common sense. I
+mean that I believe she will find herself called to an Order of pure
+Contemplatives. She will make a Retreat here, and very likely will be
+shown during it what is God's will for her."
+
+It surprised the kind and warm-hearted Religious that he did not inquire
+whether that life were not very hard. But she took charitable refuge in
+the supposition that he knew so little about one Order or another as to
+be free from the dread that his child might have a life of great
+austerity before her.
+
+"You may be sure," she said, in case later on any such affectionate
+misgiving should trouble him, "that she will be happy. Unseen by you or
+us she will do great things for God and His children. You shall share in
+it by giving her to Him when He calls. She is your only child ("As yet,"
+thought Don Joaquin, even now more concerned for her brother, than for
+her) and God will reward your generosity. He never lets Himself be
+outstripped in that. For the gift of Abraham's son He blest his whole
+race."
+
+Don Joaquin knew very little about Abraham, but he understood that all
+the Jews since his time had been notably successful in finance.
+
+It did not cause him any particular emotion to leave his daughter. She
+was being left where she liked to be, and would doubtless be at home
+among these holy women who seemed to think so much of her, and to be so
+fond of her. He had forgiven her for wishing to be a nun and thought
+highly of himself for having given his permission.
+
+The nuns thought he concealed his feelings to spare Mariquita's, and
+praised God for the unselfishness of parents.
+
+Mariquita had never expected tenderness from him, but she thought him a
+good man and a good father, and was very grateful for his concession in
+abandoning his insistence on her marriage, and sanctioning her choice of
+her own way of life. And he did embrace her on parting, and bade God
+bless her, reminding her that it would be her duty to pray much for
+himself and Sarella. At the range he found a letter, which had arrived
+late on the day on which he had left home with her, and this letter he
+took as a proof that she had prayed to some purpose. The dispensation
+was granted and he could now fix his marriage for any date he chose.
+
+"Did she send me her love?" Sarella asked, jealous of being at all
+forgotten.
+
+"Yes, twice; and when I kissed her she said, 'Kiss Sarella for me.' Also
+she sent you a letter."
+
+Sarella received very few letters and liked getting them. She was rather
+curious to see what sort of letter Mariquita would write, and made up
+her mind it would be "nunnish and poky."
+
+Whether "nunnish" or no, it was not "poky," but pleasant, very cheerful
+and bright, and very affectionate. It contained little jokish allusions
+to home matters, and former confidential talks, and one passage (much
+valued by Sarella) concerning a gown, retracting a former opinion and
+substituting another backed by most valid reasons. "If those speckled
+hens go on eating each other's feathers," said the letter, "you'll have
+to kill them and eat them. Once they start they never give it up, and it
+puts the idea in the others' heads. Feathers don't suit everybody, but
+fowls look wicked without them. I hope poor old Jack doesn't miss me;
+give him and Ginger my love, and ask him to forgive me for not marrying
+Mr. Gore--he gave me a terrible lecture about it, and Ginger said, 'Quit
+it, Dad! I _knew_ she wouldn't. I know sweethearts when I see
+them--though I never did see one--not of my own.' I expect Larry Burke
+will show her one soon, don't you, Sarella? It will do very well; Larry
+will have the looks and Ginger will have the sense, and teach him all
+he needs. He has such a good heart he can get on without _too_ much
+sense...."
+
+Sarella liked her letter, and decided that Mariquita was not lost,
+though removed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+
+"I suppose," Don Joaquin remarked in a disengaged manner, "that, after
+all your preparations, we can fix the day for our wedding any time now."
+
+Sarella was not in the least taken in by his elaborate air of having
+been able, for _his_ part, to have fixed a day long ago.
+
+It was, however, part of her system to fall in with people's whimsies
+when nothing was to be gained by opposing or exposing them.
+
+"Oh, yes," she agreed, most amiably. "It will take three Sundays to
+publish the banns--any day after that. Meanwhile I should be received.
+Sister Aquinas says I am ready. As soon as we have settled the exact
+time, we must let Mariquita know, and you can, when the time comes, go
+over and fetch her home."
+
+Don Joaquin consented, and Sarella thought she would go and deliver
+Mariquita's message to Jack and his daughter. She found them together
+and began by saying, smilingly:
+
+"I expect you have known for a long while that there was a marriage in
+the air?"
+
+Old Jack had not learned to like her, and Ginger still disliked her
+smile.
+
+"I don't believe," she said perversely, for, of course, both she and her
+father understood perfectly, "that Miss Mariquita is going to be
+married. She's not that way."
+
+This was a discouraging opening, for it seemed to cast a sort of slur on
+young women who _were_ likely to be married.
+
+"Mr. Gore's never asked again!" cried Jack.
+
+"Dad, don't you be silly," Ginger suggested; "everyone knows Miss
+Mariquita wants to be a nun."
+
+"Yes," said Sarella with impregnable amiability, "but we can't all be
+nuns. Miss Mariquita doesn't seem to think _you_ likely to be one. She
+sent me back by her father such a nice letter. She sends Jack and you
+her love, and, though she doesn't send Larry Burke her love, thinking of
+you evidently makes her think of him."
+
+Ginger visibly relaxed, and her father stared appallingly with his one
+eye.
+
+"Good Lord!" quoth he in more sincere than flattering astonishment.
+
+"Well, he is good," Ginger observed cooly, "and there's worse folk than
+Larry Burke, or me either."
+
+"Miss Mariquita thinks it would be such a good thing for him," Sarella
+reported. "So must any one."
+
+Ginger felt that this, after her unpleasantness to the young lady who
+brought the message, was handsome.
+
+"He might do better," she declared, "and he might do worse."
+
+"Has he _said_ anything?" her father inquired with undisguised
+incredulity.
+
+"What he's said is nothing," Ginger calmly replied. "It's what I think
+as matters. He's no Cressote, but he's got a bit--or ought, if he hasn't
+spent it. I'd keep his money together for him, and he'd soon find it a
+saving. And I could do with him--for if his head's soft so's his heart.
+I think, Dad," she concluded, willing "to take it out" of her father
+for his unflattering incredulity, "you may as well, when Miss Sarella's
+gone, tell him to step round. I'll soon fix it."
+
+"I couldn't do that," Jack expostulated.
+
+"Why not?" Ginger demanded with fell determination.
+
+"I really don't see why you shouldn't," Sarella protested, much amused
+though not betraying it. "It's all for his good," she added seriously.
+
+Jack was shaken, but not yet disposed to obedience.
+
+"Larry," Sarella urged, "won't be so much surprised as you think. Miss
+Mariquita, you see, wants him and Ginger to make a match of it--"
+
+"But does _he_?" Jack pleaded, moved by Mariquita's opinion, but not so
+sure it would reduce Larry to subjection.
+
+"Tut!" said Ginger impatiently. "What's _he_ to do with it? If he don't
+know what's best for him, I do. So does Miss Sarella. So does Miss
+Mariquita."
+
+"And," Sarella added, "you may be sure Miss Mariquita would never have
+said a word about it if she hadn't felt pretty sure it was to come off.
+She's never been one to be planning marriages. Why, Larry must have made
+it as plain as a pikestaff that he was ready, or she would never have
+guessed it."
+
+The weight of this argument left Jack defenseless.
+
+"Hadn't you better wait, Ginger," he attempted to argue with shallow
+subtlety; "he's like enough to step round after supper. Then I'd clear,
+and you could say when you liked."
+
+"No," Ginger decided, "I'm tired of him stepping round after supper,
+just to chatter. He'd be prepared if you told him I'd said he was to
+come. He'd know something was wanted. In fact, you'd better tell him."
+
+"Tell him? Me? Tell him what?"
+
+"Just that I'd made up my mind to say 'yes' if he'd a question to ask
+me."
+
+"Why," cried Jack, aghast, "he'd get on his horse and scoot."
+
+"Not far," Ginger opined, entirely unmoved. "He'd ride back. He's not
+pluck enough to be such a coward as to scoot for good. Just you try."
+
+The two women drove the battered old fellow off, Ginger laughed and
+said:
+
+"Aren't men helpless?"
+
+Sarella was full of admiration of her prowess.
+
+"Well, _you're_ not," she said.
+
+"Not me. But, Dad won't find Larry as much surprised as he thinks. It's
+been in the silly chap's head (or where folks keep their ideas that have
+no head) this three weeks. _I_ saw, though he never said a lot--"
+
+Overpowered by curiosity, Sarella asked boldly what he did say.
+
+"Oh, just rubbish," Ginger answered laughing; "you're as clean as a
+tablet of scented soap, anyway," says he, first. Then he said, "Ginger,
+I've known pretty girls with hair not near so nice as yours--not a
+quarter so much of it." Another time he asked if I kept a tooth-brush.
+"I thought so," says he, quite loving; "your teeth's as white as nuts
+with the brown skin off, and as regular as a row of tombstones in an
+undertaker's window. I never _did_ mind freckles as true as I stand
+here ..." and stuff like that. But the strongest ever he said was,
+"Pastry! What's pastry when a woman don't know how to make it. I'd as
+soon eat second-hand toast. Yours, Ginger, is like what the angels make,
+_I_ should say, at Thanksgiving for the little angels.'"
+
+"Did he, really!" said Sarella, feeling quite sure that Larry would not
+"scoot."
+
+"I told him," Ginger explained calmly, that if he didn't quit such
+senseless talk _he'd_ never get any more of my pastry. He looked so down
+that I gave him a slice of pumpkin pie when he was leaving. "The
+pastry," says I, "will mind you of me, and the pumpkin of yourself." But
+he got his own back, for he just grinned and said, "Yes, I'll think o'
+them together, Ginger, for the pie and the pumpkin belongs together,
+don't they?"
+
+Sarella laughed and expressed her belief that after all Jack's embassy
+was rather superfluous.
+
+"Maybe so. But I knew he'd hate it, and he deserved it for seeming so
+unbelieving. If my mother had been _lovely_ I'd have been born plain;
+it's not _him_ as should think me too ugly for any young fellow to
+fancy. I daresay I shouldn't have decided to take Larry if Miss
+Mariquita hadn't sent that message. I was afraid she'd think me a fool.
+Here's Larry coming round the corner, looking as if he'd been stealing
+his mother's sugar."
+
+"He's only thinking of your pastry," said Sarella. "I'll slip off. May I
+be told when it's all settled?"
+
+"Yes, certainly, Miss Sarella, and I'm sure I wish all that's best to
+the Boss and yourself. It's not everyone could manage him, but _you_
+will. Poor Miss Mariquita never could. She was too good."
+
+With these mixed compliments Sarella had to content herself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+
+When she answered Mariquita's letter she was to report not only the
+judicial end of the plumiverous and specked hens, but the betrothal of
+Larry Burke and Ginger. "Nothing," she wrote, "but his dread of your
+displeasure could have overcome his dread of what the other cowboys
+would say on hearing of his proposing. After all, he has more sense than
+some sharp fellows who follow at last the advice they know is worth
+least...."
+
+In her next letter Sarella said:
+
+"I am to be made a Catholic on Monday next; so when you're saying your
+prayers (and that's all day) you can be thinking of me. Perhaps I gave
+in to it first to satisfy your father; but even then I thought 'if it
+makes me a bit more like Mariquita he'll get a better bargain in me.' I
+shan't ever be at all like you, but I shall be of the same Religion as
+you, and I know by this time that it will do me good. It's all a bit
+too big for me to understand, but I like what I do understand, and
+Sister Aquinas says I shall grow into it. Clothes, she says, fit better
+when they're worn a bit, and sit easier. She says, 'It has changed you,
+my dear child, already; you are gentler, and kinder.' She said another
+thing, 'Your husband has been a Catholic all his life, but you will
+gradually make him a better one. He is a very sensible man, and he can't
+see you learning to be a Catholic and not want to learn what it really
+means himself. He is too honest.' She likes your father a lot, and never
+bothers him. 'I know,' she said, 'you will not bother him either. Some
+earnest Catholics do bother their men-folks terribly about religious
+things--and for all the good they seem to do, might be only half as
+earnest and have a better effect.' I make my First Communion the day
+after I'm received. And, Mariquita, my dear, we are to be married that
+day week. Your father will fetch you home, and mind, _mind_, you come. I
+should never forgive you if you didn't. Shall I have Ginger for a
+bridesmaid? I know some brides do choose ugly ones to make themselves
+look better. The cowboys (this is a dead secret told me by Ginger) have
+subscribed to give us a wedding-present. I hope it won't be one of those
+clocks like black-marble monuments with a round gilt eye in it. I expect
+the cowboys laugh at both these marriages. But they rather like them.
+They make a lark, and they never do dislike anything they can laugh at.
+They certainly all look twice as amiably at me when we meet about the
+place since they _knew_ I was going to be married. And Ginger finds them
+so friendly and pleasant I expect she thinks she might, if she had
+liked, have married the lot. But that's different. I daresay you notice
+that I write more cheerfully, now it is settled. Yes, I do. I like him a
+great deal more than at first. It began when he gave in about what you
+wanted. I really believe I shall make him happy--and I fancy I think of
+that more--I mean less of his making me happy. And, Mariquita, it _is_
+good of me to have wanted you to be let alone to be a nun if you thought
+it right, because, oh dear, how I should like you to be living near or
+at the next range! Before I got to know you, it was just the opposite. I
+hoped you'd get a husband of your own and _quit_; I did. I thought you'd
+hate your father marrying again, and (if you stayed on here) would be
+looking disapproval all day long, and perhaps I thought you would not be
+best pleased at not getting all his money when he died. (I think when
+people go to Confession they ought to confess things like that. Do
+they?) Oh, Mariquita, you will be missed. But I'd rather miss you, and
+know you were being what you felt yourself called away to, than think I
+had helped to have you interfered with...."
+
+Mariquita, reading Sarella's letter, felt something new in her life,
+something strangely moving, that filled her eyes and heart with
+something also new--happy tears. The free gift of tenderness came newly
+to her; and, it may be, she had least of all looked for it from Sarella.
+
+"'Do people,' she quoted to herself from Sarella _herself_, 'confess
+these things?' I will, anyway."
+
+It hurt her to think that she who so loved justice and charity, must
+have been both uncharitable and unjust.
+
+But can we agree? Had not Sarella's unforeseen tenderness been her own
+gift to her? Had Sarella brought tenderness with her from the East?
+
+At the stranger's first coming Mariquita had not judged but _felt_ her,
+and her feeling (of which she herself knew very little) had been
+instinctively correct while it lasted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+
+Of course Mariquita kept her promise of being present at her father's
+marriage. It had never occurred to her that she could be absent; it was
+a duty of respect that she owed to him, and a duty of fellow-womanhood
+that she owed to Sarella.
+
+It amused her a little to hear that a certain Mrs. Kane was to be
+present, in a sort of maternal quality, and that Mr. Kane was to give
+the bride away as a sort of official father. Mr. Kane might have seen
+Sarella a dozen times--in the parlor of the convent, which she was much
+given to frequent. Mrs. Kane had, so far as Mariquita was aware, never
+seen her at all--except at Mass.
+
+They were Kentuckians who had moved west some twelve years earlier than
+Sarella herself, and, though they had not made a fortune, were
+sufficiently well off to be rather leading members of the congregation.
+Mrs. Kane's most outstanding characteristic was a genius for organizing
+bazaars, on a scale of ever-increasing importance; the first had been
+for the purchase of a harmonium, the last had been to raise funds for a
+new wing to the Convent; all her friends had prophesied failure for the
+first; no one had dared predict anything but dazzling success for the
+last. Mr. Kane was not less remarkable for his phenomenal success in the
+matter of whist-drives--and raffles. He would raffle the nose off your
+face if you would let him, and hand over an astonishing sum to the
+church when he had done it, with the most exquisite satisfaction that
+the proceeding was not strictly legal.
+
+Both the Kanes were extremely amusing, and no one could decide which was
+the more good-natured of the two. Of week-day afternoons Mrs. Kane was
+quite sumptuously attired, Mr. Kane liked to be rather shabby even on
+Sundays at Mass, which caused him to be generally reported somewhat more
+affluent than he really was. He had always been supposed to be "about
+fifty," whereas Mrs. Kane had, ever since her arrival, spoken of herself
+as "on the sensible side of thirty."
+
+At Sarella's wedding Mrs. Kane's magnificence deeply impressed the
+cowboys; and Mr. Kane's elaborate paternity towards the bride, whom he
+only knew by her dress, would have deceived if it had been possible the
+very elect; they were not precisely that and it did not deceive, though
+it hugely delighted them.
+
+"I swear he's _crying_!" whispered Pete Rugger to Larry Burke. "He cried
+just like that in the play when Mrs. Hooger ran away with her own
+husband that represented the hero."
+
+"Well," said Larry, "a man can't help his feelings."
+
+He was secretly wondering if Mr. Kane would give away Ginger--he would
+do it so much better than Jack.
+
+Mrs. Kane affected no tears. She had the air of serenely parting with a
+daughter, for her own good, to an excellent, wealthy husband whom she
+had found for her, and of being ready to do as much for the rest of her
+many daughters--Mr. and Mrs. Kane were childless.
+
+Perhaps this attitude on her part suited better with her resplendent
+costume than it would have suited her husband's black attire--which he
+kept for funerals.
+
+Little was lost on the cowboys, and they did not fail to note that the
+gray which of recent years had been invading the "Boss's" hair had
+disappeared.
+
+"In the distance he don't look a lot older than Gore," Pete Rugger
+declared to his neighbor.
+
+Gore supported Don Joaquin as "best" or groomsman.
+
+It was significant that on Mariquita's appearance no spoken comment was
+made by any of the cowboys, though to each of them she was the most
+absorbing figure. Her father had fetched her from Loretto three days
+before the wedding, and at the Convent had been introduced to a
+learned-looking but agreeable ecclesiastic who was a rector of a college
+for lay youths.
+
+Don Joaquin, much interested, had plied the reverend pundit with
+inquiries concerning this seat of learning, not forgetting particular
+inquisition as to the terms.
+
+On their conclusion he took notes in writing of all the replies and
+declared that it sounded exactly what he would choose for his own son.
+
+"I would like," he said, with a simplicity that rather touched the
+rector, "that my lad should grow up with more education than I ever
+had."
+
+"Your son," surmised the rector, "would be younger than his sister?"
+
+"He would," Don Joaquin admitted, without condescending upon
+particulars.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+
+When Gore next saw Mariquita in public she herself was dressed as a
+bride. It was a little more than a year later. After her return to
+Loretto she remained there about three weeks, at the end of which she
+went home to the range for a week. Her parents (as Don Joaquin insisted
+on describing himself and Sarella) had returned from their wedding trip,
+and she could see that the marriage was a success. The two new servants
+were installed, and Ginger was now Mrs. Lawrence Burke and absent on
+_her_ wedding journey.
+
+Mariquita's father made more of her than of old, and inwardly resolved
+to make up to "her brother" for any shortcomings there might have been
+in her case.
+
+Sarella was unfeignedly glad to have her at home, and looked forward
+sadly to her final departure. Of one thing she was resolved--that
+Mariquita should be taken all the way to her "Carmel" in California by
+both "her parents." And, of course, she got her own way.
+
+The extreme beauty of the Convent and its surroundings, the glory of the
+climate, the brilliance of its light, the splendor of the blue and gold
+of sky and hills, half blinded Sarella to the rigor of the life
+Mariquita was entering--till the moment of actual farewell came. Then
+her tears fell, far more plentifully than Mr. Kane's at her own wedding.
+
+Still she admitted that the nuns were as cheerful as the sky, and
+wondered if she had ever heard more happy laughter than theirs as they
+sat on the floor, with Mariquita in their midst, behind the grille in
+the "speak-room." As a postulant Mariquita did not wear the habit, but
+only a sort of cloak over her own dress; her glorious hair was not yet
+cut off.
+
+Don Joaquin did not see the nuns, as did Sarella, with the curtains of
+the grille drawn back. It seemed to him that the big spikes of the
+grille were turned the wrong way, for he could not imagine anyone
+desiring to get forcibly _in_. He watched everything, fully content to
+take all for granted as the regulation and proper thing, without
+particularly understanding any of it. It gave him considerable
+satisfaction to hear that Saint Theresa was a Spaniard, and he thought
+it sensible of Mariquita to join a Spanish order. He had no misgivings
+as to her finding the life hard--he did not know in the least what the
+life was, and made no inquisition; he had a general idea that women did
+not feel fastings and so forth. He would have felt it very much himself
+if he had had to rise with the dawn and go fasting till midday, instead
+of beginning the day with a huge meal of meat.
+
+The old life at the range, as it had been when Sarella first came, was
+never resumed. She was determined that its complete isolation should be
+changed, and she changed it with wonderful rapidity and success. The
+friendly and kind-hearted Kanes helped her a great deal. They had
+insisted, at the wedding itself, that the bride and bridegroom should
+pay them a very early visit, after their return from their
+wedding-journey. It was paid immediately on their getting back from
+California, and it lasted several days. During those days their host and
+hostess took care that they should meet all the leading Catholics of the
+place, to whom Sarella made herself pleasant, administering to them (in
+her husband's disconcerted presence) pressing invitations to come out to
+the range: though they all had autos it was not to be expected that they
+would come so far for a cup of tea, and they came for a night, and often
+for two or three nights. Naturally the Kanes came first and they spoke
+almost with solemnity (as near solemnity as either could attain) of
+social duty. It was an obligation on all Catholics to hang together, and
+hanging together obviously implied frequent mutual hospitalities. Don
+Joaquin had found that the practice of his religion did imply
+obligations and duties never realized before, and he was a little
+confused as to their relative strictness. On the whole, he succumbed to
+what Sarella intended, with a compliance that might have surprised
+Mariquita had she been there to see. Some of the cowboys were of the
+opinion that the old man was breaking. He was only being (not
+immediately) broken in. A man of little over fifty, of iron
+constitution, does not "break," however old he may appear to
+five-and-twenty or thirty. The sign that appeared most ominous to these
+young men was that "the Boss" betrayed symptoms of less rigid
+stinginess; there was nothing really alarming about the symptoms. Such
+as they were they were due, not so much to any decay in the patient's
+constitution, as to a little awakening of conscience referable, such as
+it was, to the late-begun practices of confession. Old Jack was made
+foreman, at an increase of pay by no means dazzling, but quite
+satisfactory to himself, who had not expected any such promotion. Larry
+and Ginger settled, about two miles from the homestead, in a small house
+which they were permitted by Don Joaquin to build. Two of the cowboys
+found themselves wives whom they had first seen in church at Sarella's
+wedding; these young ladies, it appeared, had severally resolved that
+under no circumstances would they marry any but Catholics, and their
+lovers accepted the position, largely on the ground that a religion good
+enough for Miss Mariquita would be good enough for them.
+
+"Too good," grimly observed one of their comrades who was not then
+engaged to marry a Catholic.
+
+Don Joaquin allowed the two who were married to have a little place
+built for themselves on the range. And as the brides were each
+plentifully provided with sisters it seems likely that soon Don Joaquin
+will have quite a numerous tenantry. It also appears probable that a
+priest will presently be resident at the range, for one has already
+entered into correspondence with Don Joaquin on the subject. Having
+recently recovered from a "chest trouble," he has been advised that the
+air of the high prairies holds out the best promise of continued life
+and avoidance of tuberculosis. There is another scheme afoot of which,
+perhaps, Don Joaquin as yet knows nothing. It began in the active mind
+of Sister Aquinas, and its present stage consists of innumerable
+prayers on her part that she may be able to establish out on the range
+a little hospital, served by nuns, for the resuscitation of patients
+threatened with consumption. She sees in the invalid priest a chaplain
+plainly provided as an answer to prayer; Mr. and Mrs. Kane, her
+confidants, see in the scheme immense occasion for unbridled bazaars and
+whist drives. All friends of Mr. Kane meet him on their guard, uncertain
+which of their possessions he may have it in his eye to raffle. Even as
+I write, I hear that another answer to the dear nun's prayers looms into
+sight. A widowed sister of her own, wealthy, childless and of profuse
+generosity, writes to her, and the burden of her song is that she would
+not mind (her chest having always been weak) going to the proposed
+sanatorium herself, at all events for a few years, and bringing with her
+Doctor Malone: Dr. Malone is of unparalleled genius in his profession,
+but tuberculous, and it is transparently plain that his kind and
+affluent friend wishes to finance him and remove him to an
+"anti-tuberculous air."
+
+It seems to me certain that Sister Aquinas's prayers will very soon be
+answered, and the sanatorium be a fact. She has, I know, mentally
+christened it already, "Mariquita" is to be its name.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+
+Mariquita's profession took place fourteen months after her father's
+second marriage. Her brother was already an accomplished fact; he was,
+indeed, six weeks old and present (not alone) on the occasion. He was
+startlingly like his father, a circumstance not adverse to his future
+comeliness as a man, but which made him a little portentous as a baby.
+Don Joaquin on the day of his birth wrote to the rector of the college
+whom he had met at Loretto with many additional inquiries. Mariquita
+first beheld her brother when, fortunately, his father and her own was
+not present, for she laughed terribly at the great little black creature
+with eyes and nose at present much too big. He looked about fifty and
+had all the solemnity of that distant period of his life.
+
+"_Isn't_ he a thorough Spaniard?" Sarella demanded, pretending to pout
+discontentedly. But Mariquita saw very clearly that she was as proud of
+her baby as Don Joaquin himself. Since his birth Sarella's letters had
+been full of him, and she thought of _his_ clothes now. She had
+persuaded her husband, as a thank-offering for his son, to give a
+considerable piece of ground, in a beautiful situation, not a mile from
+the homestead, as the site of the future Church, Convent, and
+Sanatorium.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The beautiful and bright chapel of the Carmelite convent was free of
+people; two prie-dieus, side by side, had been placed at the entrance of
+the church. Towards these Mariquita, dressed as a bride, walked, leaning
+on her father's arm. She had always possessed the rare natural gift of
+walking beautifully. No one in the church had ever seen a bride more
+beautiful, more radiant, or more distinguished by unlearned grace and
+dignity.
+
+Among the congregation, but nearest to the two prie-dieus, knelt
+Sarella and Mr. Gore.
+
+Behind their grille the nuns were singing the ancient Latin hymn of
+invocation to the Holy Ghost.
+
+Presently the Archbishop in noble words set out the Church's doctrine
+and attitude concerning "Holy Religion," especially in reference to the
+Orders called Contemplative, for no Catholic Order of religion can be
+anything but contemplative, in its own degree and fashion. He dwelt upon
+the thing called Vocation, and the vocation of every human soul to
+heaven, each by its own road of service, love, and obedience; then upon
+the more exceptional vocation of some, whereby God calls them to come to
+Him by roads special and less thronged by travellers to the Golden Gate;
+pointing out that the Church, unwavering guardian of Christian liberty,
+in every age insisted on the freedom of such souls to accept that Divine
+summons as the rest are free to go to Him by the ways of His more
+ordinary and usual Providence. He spoke of the Church's prudence in this
+as in all else, and of the courses enjoined by her to enable a sound
+judgment to be made as to the reality of such exceptional vocation; and
+so of postulancy, novitiate, and profession.
+
+His words ended, the "bride" and her father rose from their knees and
+after (on his part the usual genuflection) and on hers a slow and
+profound reverence, they turned and walked down the church as they had
+come, she leaning upon his arm. After them the whole congregation moved
+out of the chapel, and went behind them to the high wooden gates behind
+which was the large garden of the "enclosure." Grouped before these
+gates all waited, listening to the nuns slowly advancing towards them
+from the other side, out of sight, but audible, for they were singing as
+they came. Slowly the heavy gates opened inwards, and the Carmelites
+could be seen. In front stood one carrying a great wooden crucifix. The
+faces of none of them could be seen, for their long black veils hung,
+before and behind, down to the level of their knees, leaving only a
+little of the brown habit visible.
+
+Mariquita embraced her father, and Sarella spoke a low word to Gore,
+who stood on one side of Sarella, went forward with a low reverence
+towards the Crucifix, kissed its feet, and then turned; with a profound
+curtesy she greeted those who had gathered to see her entrance into Holy
+Religion, and took her farewell of "the world," the gates closed slowly,
+and among her Sisters she went back to the chapel.
+
+The congregation returned thither also. Many were softly weeping; poor
+Sarella was crying bitterly. Her husband was not unmoved, but his grave
+dignity was not broken by tears. Gore could not have spoken, but there
+was no occasion for speech.
+
+Behind the nun's grille in the chapel the little community was gathered,
+Mariquita among them, no longer in her bride's dress, but in the brown
+habit without scapular or leathern belt.
+
+The Archbishop advanced close to the grille and put to her many
+questions. What did she ask? Profession in the order of holy religion of
+Mount Carmel. Was this of her own free desire? Yes. Had any coerced or
+urged her to it? No one. Did she believe that God Himself had called her
+to it? Yes. And many other questions.
+
+Then the Archbishop blessed the scapular, and it was put upon her by her
+Sisters, as in the case of the belt. So with each article of her nun's
+dress, sandals and veil.
+
+Thereafter, upon ashes, she lay upon the ground covered by a Pall, and
+De Profundis was sung.
+
+So the solemn rite proceeded to its end. Afterwards the new Religious
+sat in the parlor of the grille, or "speak-room," and the witnesses kept
+it full for a long time, as in succession they went to talk to her where
+she sat behind the grille.
+
+The last of all was Gore. He only went in as the last of the groups came
+out.
+
+"I was afraid you might not come," Mariquita told him. "Thank you for
+coming. If you had not come I should have been afraid that you felt it
+sad. There is nothing sad about it, is there?"
+
+"Indeed nothing."
+
+There was something in her voice that told him she was gayer than of
+old, happy she had always been. Though she smiled radiantly she did not
+laugh as she said:
+
+"I know the _ceremonies_ are rather harrowing to the lookers-on. (I
+heard someone sob--dear Sarella, I'm afraid.) But not to _us_. One is
+not sad because one has been allowed to do the one thing one wanted to
+do? Is one?"
+
+"Not when it is a great, good thing like this."
+
+"Ah, how kind you are! I always told you you were the kindest person I
+had ever met. Yes the _thing_ is great and good--only you must help me
+to do it in God's own way, in the way He wishes it done. You will not
+get tired of helping, by your prayers for me, will you?"
+
+"Of course I never shall."
+
+Presently she said, not laughing now either, but with a ripple like the
+laughter of running water in her voice, "You can't think how I like it
+all, how amusing some of it is! One has to do 'manual labor'--washing
+pots and pans, and cleaning floors; I believe it is supposed to be a
+little humiliating, and meant to keep us humble. And you know how used
+I am to it. I'm afraid of its making me conceited--I do it so much
+better than the Sisters who never did anything like that at home. Mother
+Prioress is always afraid, too, that I shan't eat enough, and that I
+shall say too many prayers. I fell into a pond we have in our garden,
+and she was terrified, thinking I must be drowned; no one could drown in
+it without standing on her head. I was trying to get a water-lily, so I
+fell in and came out frightfully muddy and smelly, too.... You must be
+kind to Sarella; she is so good, and has been so good to me. I shall
+never forget what you and she did for me. Write to her if you go away,
+and tell her all about yourself."
+
+"What there is to tell."
+
+"Oh, there will be lots. You are not such a bad letter-writer as
+that...."
+
+So they talked, the small, trivial, kindly talk that belongs to
+friendship, and showed him that Mariquita was more Mariquita than ever,
+now she was Sister Consuelo. Her father liked the Spanish name, without
+greatly realizing its reference to Our Lady of Good Counsel.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mariquita, by John Ayscough
+
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