t prejudice.'"

"But Yerba"--began Paul, bitterly.

She slightly raised her hand as if to check him with a warning gesture.
"Yes, dear," she said suddenly, lifting her musical voice, with a
mischievous side-glance at Paul, as if to indicate her conception of
the irony of a possible application, "this way. Here we are waiting for
you." Her listening ear had detected Milly's step in the passage, and
in another moment that cheerful young woman discreetly stopped on the
threshold of the room, with every expression of apologetic indiscretion
in her face.

"We have finished our talk, and Mr. Hathaway has been so concerned
about my having no real name that he has been promising me everything,
but his own, for a suitable one. Haven't you, Mr. Hathaway?" She rose
slowly and, going over to Milly, put her arm around her waist and stood
for one instant gazing at him between the curtains of the doorway.
"Good night. My very proper chaperon is dreadfully shocked at this
midnight interview, and is taking me away. Only think of it, Milly; he
actually proposed to me to walk in the garden with him! Good night,
or, as my ancestors--don't forget, MY ANCESTORS--used to say: 'Buena
noche--hasta manana!'" She lingered over the Spanish syllables with an
imitation of Dona Anna's lisp, and with another smile, but more faint
and more ghostlike than before; vanished with her companion.

At eight o'clock the next morning Paul was standing beside his
portmanteau on the veranda.

"But this is a sudden resolution of yours, Hathaway," said Mr. Woods.
"Can you not possibly wait for the next train? The girls will be down
then, and you can breakfast comfortably."

"I have much to do--more than I imagined--in San Francisco before I
return," said Paul, quickly. "You must make my excuses to them and to
your wife."

"I hope," said Woods, with an uneasy laugh, "you have had no more words
with Don Caesar, or he with you?"

"No," said Paul, with a reassuring smile, "nothing more, I assure you."

"For you know you're a devilish quick fellow, Hathaway," continued
Woods, "quite as quick as your friend Pendleton. And, by the way,
Baker is awfully cut up about that absurd speech of his, you know. Came
to me last night and wondered if anybody could think it was
intentional. I told him it was d--d stupid, that was all. I guess his
wife had been at him. Ha! ha! You see, he remembers the old times,
when everybody talked of these things, and that w