sed laugh.

"But you must come and see me, Mr.--Mr. Harcourt," she said, producing
a card from a case already in her fingers, "at my hotel, and let my
brother thank you there for your kindness and gallantry to a stranger. I
shall be here a few weeks longer before we go south to look for a place
where my brother can winter. DO come and see me, although I cannot
introduce you to anything as real and beautiful as what YOU have shown
me to-day. Good-by, Mr. Harcourt; I won't trouble you to come down and
bore yourself with my escort's questions and congratulations."

She bent her head and allowed her soft eyes to rest upon his with a
graciousness that was beyond her speech, pulled her veil over her eyes
again, with a pretty suggestion that she had no further use for them,
and taking her riding-skirt lightly in her hand seemed to glide from the
room.

On her way to San Mateo, where it appeared the disorganized party had
prolonged their visit to accept an invitation to dine with a local
magnate, she was pleasantly conversational with the slightly abstracted
Grant. She was so sorry to have given them all this trouble and anxiety!
Of course she ought to have waited at the fork of the road, but she had
never doubted but she could rejoin them presently on the main road. She
was glad that Miss Euphemia's runaway horse had been stopped without
accident; it would have been dreadful if anything had happened to HER;
Mr. Harcourt seemed so wrapped up in his girls. It was a pity they never
had a son--Ah? Indeed! Then there was a son? So--and father and son had
quarreled? That was so sad. And for some trifling cause, no doubt?

"I believe he married the housemaid," said Grant grimly. "Be
careful!--Allow me."

"It's no use!" said Mrs. Ashwood, flushing with pink impatience, as she
recovered her seat, which a sudden bolt of her mustang had imperiled, "I
really can't make out the tricks of this beast! Thank you," she added,
with a sweet smile, "but I think I can manage him now. I can't see
why he stopped. I'll be more careful. You were saying the son was
married--surely not that boy!"

"Boy!" echoed Grant. "Then you know?"--

"I mean of course he must be a boy--they all grew up here--and it was
only five or six years ago that their parents emigrated," she retorted a
little impatiently. "And what about this creature?"

"Your horse?"

"You know I mean the woman he married. Of course she was older than
he--and caught him?"

"I thin