emed delighted to welcome her to Santa
Fe, and who now called on her nearly every day. Might it not be that
Lieutenant Thurstane would want to make her Mrs. Thurstane, and would have
power granted him to induce her to consent to the arrangement? Clara was
sufficiently a woman, and sufficiently a Spanish woman especially, to
believe in marriage. She did not mean particularly to be Mrs. Thurstane,
but she did mean generally to be Mrs. Somebody. And why not Thurstane?
Well, that was for him to decide, at least to a considerable extent. In
the mean time she did not love him; she only disliked the thought of
leaving him.

While these two women had been talking and thinking, a lazy Indian servant
had been lounging up the stairway. Arrived on the roof, he advanced to La
Senorita Clara, and handed her a letter. The girl opened it, glanced
through it with a flushing face, and cried out delightedly, "It is from my
grandfather. How wonderful! O holy Maria, thanks! His heart has been
softened. He invites me to come and live with him in San Francisco. _O
Madre de Dios!_"

Although Clara spoke English perfectly, and although she was in faith
quite as much of a Protestant as a Catholic, yet in her moments of strong
excitement she sometimes fell back into the language and ideas of her
childhood.

"Child, what are you jabbering about?" asked Aunt Maria.

"There it is. See! Pedro Munoz! It is his own signature. I have seen
letters of his. Pedro Munoz! Read it. Oh! you don't read Spanish."

Then she translated the letter aloud. Aunt Maria listened with a firm and
almost stern aspect, like one who sees some justice done, but not enough.

"He doesn't beg your pardon," she said at the close of the reading.

Clara, supposing that she was expected to laugh, and not seeing the point
of the joke, stared in amazement.

"But probably he is in a meeker mood now," continued Aunt Maria. "By this
time it is to be hoped that he sees his past conduct in a proper light.
The letter was written three months ago."

"Three months ago," repeated Clara. "Yes, it has taken all that time to
come. How long will it take me to go there? How shall I go?"

"We will see," said Aunt Maria, with the air of one who holds the fates in
her hand, and doesn't mean to open it till she gets ready. She was by no
means satisfied as yet that this grandfather Munoz was a proper person to
be intrusted with the destinies of a young lady. In refusing to let his
daughter se