--she was unconcernedly
conversing with Milly and Mrs. Woods, and already the visitors who had
been invited to this hurried levee in his honor were arriving. In view
of his late indiscretion, he nervously exerted his fullest powers, and
in a very few minutes was surrounded by a breathless and admiring group
of worshipers. A ludicrous resemblance to the scene in the Golden Gate
Hotel passed through his mind; he involuntarily turned his eyes to seek
Yerba in the half-fear, half-expectation of meeting her mischievous
smile. Their glances met; to his surprise hers was smileless, and
instantly withdrawn, but not until he had been thrilled by an
unconscious prepossession in its luminous depths that he scarcely dared
to dwell upon. What mattered now this passage with Don Caesar or the
plaudits of his friends? SHE was proud of him!

Yet, after that glance, she was shy, preoccupying herself with Milly,
or even listening sweetly to Judge Baker's somewhat practical and
unromantic reminiscences of the deprivations and the hardships of
California early days, as if to condone his past infelicity. She was
pleasantly unaffected with Don Caesar, although she managed to draw
Dona Anna into the conversation; she was unconventional, Paul fancied,
to all but himself. Once or twice, when he had artfully drawn her
towards the open French window that led to the moonlit garden and
shadowed veranda, she had managed to link Milly's arm in her own, and
he was confident that a suggestion to stroll with him in the open air
would be followed by her invitation to Milly to accompany them.
Disappointed and mortified as he was, he found some solace in her
manner, which he still believed suggested the hope that she might be
made accessible to his persuasions. Persuasions to what? He did not
know.

The last guest had departed; he lingered on the veranda with a cigar,
begging his host and hostess not to trouble themselves to keep him
company. Milly and Yerba had retired to the former's boudoir, but, as
they had not yet formally bade him good night, there was a chance of
their returning. He still stayed on in this hope for half an hour, and
then, accepting Yerba's continued absence as a tacit refusal of his
request, he turned abruptly away. But as he glanced around the garden
before reentering the house, he was struck by a singular
circumstance--a white patch, like a forgotten shawl, which he had
observed on the distant ceanothus hedge, and which