misunderstand me; there is no greater
fraud or bore than the writer who has acquired the art of saying nothing
brilliantly. You must have both. And you are too ambitious, too
intellectual, as distinguished from clever, too serious and logical, to
be contented with anything short of perfection. I shall be your severest
critic; but you yourself will work for years before you produce a line
with which you are wholly satisfied. Is not this true?"

"Yes; I should always be my severest critic."

He drew a long breath of relief. He had no desire for a literary wife;
nor to be known as the husband of one. Magdalena should be as happy as
he could make her, but the sooner she realised that genius was not her
portion, the better.

IX

"Never I think I come to Monterey again," said Don Roberto, as the 'bus
which contained his party only drove from the little toy station to the
big toy hotel. "Once I hate all the Spanish towns, because so
extravagant I am before that I feel 'fraid, si I return, I am all the
same like then; but now I am old and the habits fixit; and now I know my
moneys go to be safe with Trennahan, I feel more easy in the mind and
can enjoy. But I no go to the town, for all is change, I suppose: all
the womens grown old and poor, and all the mens dead--by the drink,
generalmente. Very fortunate I am I no stay there; meeting Eeram in
time. Ay, yi! What kind de house is this? Look like paper, and the
grounds so artifeecial. No like much."

Magdalena hardly knew her father these last months. From the day that he
found a reminiscent pleasure in the mild diversions of Menlo he had
visibly softened. From the day he was assured of Trennahan he had become
almost expansive, and at times was moved to generosity. Upon one
occasion he had doubled Magdalena's allowance, and at Christmas he had
given her a hundred dollars; and he had paid the bills of the season
without a murmur. The fear which had haunted him during the last thirty
years,--that he should suddenly relapse into his native extravagance and
squander his patrimony and his accumulated millions, dying as the
companions of his youth had died,--he dismissed after he met Trennahan.
Polk had been the iron mine to the voracious magnet in his character. In
the natural course of things Polk would outlive him; but the possibility
of Polk's extermination by railroad accident or small-pox had been a
second devil of torment, and during the past year he had visibly f