ender my whole life--all that I am and that I
can be--to her."

Clara had begun to guess his meaning; the quick blood was already flooding
her cheek; the light in her eyes was tremulous with agitation.

"Clara, you must know what I mean," continued Coronado, suddenly reaching
his hand toward her, as if to take her captive. "You are the only person I
ever loved. I love you with all my soul. Can your heart ever respond to
mine? Can you ever bring yourself to be my wife?"

CHAPTER VIII.

When Coronado proposed to Clara, she was for a moment stricken dumb with
astonishment and with something like terror.

Her first idea was that she must take him; that the mere fact of a man
asking for her gave him a species of right over her; that there was no
such thing possible as answering, No. She sat looking at Coronado with a
helpless, timorous air, very much as a child looks at his father, when the
father, switching his rattan, says, "Come with me."

On recovering herself a little, her first words--uttered slowly, in a tone
of surprise and of involuntary reproach--were, "Oh, Coronado! I did not
expect this."

"Can't you answer me?" he asked in a voice which was honestly tremulous
with emotion. "Can't you say yes?"

"Oh, Coronado!" repeated Clara, a good deal touched by his agitation.

"Can't you?" he pleaded. Repetitions, in such cases, are so natural and so
potent.

"Let me think, Coronado," she implored. "I can't answer you now. You have
taken me so by surprise!"

"Every moment that you take to think is torture to me," he pleaded, as he
continued to press her.

Perhaps she was on the point of giving way before his insistence. Consider
the advantages that he had over her in this struggle of wills for the
mastery. He was older by ten years; he possessed both the adroitness of
self-command and the energy of passion; he had a long experience in love
matters, while she had none. He was the proclaimed heir of a man reputed
wealthy, and could therefore, as she believed, support her handsomely.
Since the death of her father she considered Garcia the head of her family
in New Mexico; and Coronado had had the face to tell her that he made his
offer with the approval of Garcia. Then she was under supposed obligations
to him, and he was to be her protector across the desert.

She was as it were reeling in her saddle, when a truly Spanish idea saved
her.

"Munoz!" she exclaimed. "Coronado, you forget my grandfather. He