_mater dolorosa_; for her grief has
been to her as a maternity. The great change, so far from diminishing her
beauty, has made her seem more fascinating and nobler. Her countenance has
had a new birth, and exhibits a more perfect soul.

We have hitherto had little more than a superficial view of the characters
of our people. Events, incidents, adventures, and even landscapes have
been the leading personages of the story, and have been to its human
individualities what the Olympian gods are to Greek and Trojan heroes in
the Iliad. Just as Jove or Neptune rules or thwarts Agamemnon and
Achilles, so the monstrous circumstances of the desert have overborne,
dwarfed, and blurred these travellers. It is only now, when they have
escaped from the _dii majores_, and have become for a brief period
tranquil free agents, that we can see them as they are. Even yet they are
not altogether untrammelled. Man is never quite himself; he is always
under some external influence, past or present; he is always being
governed, if not being created.

Clara, born anew of trouble, is admirable. There is a sweet, sedate, and
almost solemn womanliness about her, which even overawes Mrs. Stanley,
conscious of aunthood and strongmindedness, and insisting upon it that her
niece is "a mere child." It is a great victory to gain over a lady who has
that sort of self-confidence that if she had been a sunflower and obliged
to turn toward the sun for life, she would yet have believed that it was
she who made him shine. When Clara decides a matter Mrs. Stanley, while
still mentally saying "Young thing," feels nevertheless that her own
decision has been uttered. And in every successive resistance she is
overcome the easier, for habit is a conqueror.

They have just had a discussion. Aunt Maria wants Clara to stand on her
dignity in a hotel until old Munoz goes down on his marrow-bones, makes
her a handsome allowance, and agrees to leave her at least half his
fortune. Clara's reply is substantially, "He is my grandfather and the
proper head of my family. I think I ought to go straight to him and say,
Grandfather, here I am."

Beaten by this gentle conscientiousness, Aunt Maria endeavored to appeal
the matter to Coronado.

"I am so glad to see you enjoying your cigarito once more," she called to
him with as sweet a smile as if she didn't hate tobacco.

He left his smoking retreat amidships, took off his hat with a sort of
airy gravity, and approached th