em.

"Mr. Coronado, where do you propose to take us when we reach land?" asked
Aunt Maria.

"We will, if you please, go direct to my excellent relative's," was the
reply.

Aunt Maria held her head straight up, as if stiff-neckedly refusing to go
there, but made no opposition.

Coronado had meditated everything and decided everything. It would not do
to go to a hotel, because that might lead to a suspicion that he knew all
the while about the death of Munoz. His plan was to drive at once to the
old man's place, demand him as if he expected to see him, express proper
surprise and grief over the funereal response, put the estate as soon as
possible into Clara's hands, become her man of affairs and trusted friend,
and so climb to be her husband. He was anxious; during all his perils in
the desert he had never been more so; but he bore the situation
heroically, as he could bear; his face revealed nothing but its outside--a
smile.

"My dear cousin," he presently said, "when I once fairly set you down in
your home, you will owe me, in spite of all my blunders, a word of
thanks."

"Coronado, I shall owe you more than I ever can repay," she replied
frankly, without remembering that he wanted to marry her. The next instant
she remembered it, and her face showed the first blush that had tinted it
for two months. He saw the significant color, and turned away to conceal a
joy which might have been perilous had she observed it.

Immediately on landing he proceeded to carry out his programme. He took a
hack, drove the ladies direct to the house of Munoz, and there went
decorously through the form of learning that the old man was dead. Then,
consoling the sorrowful and anxious Clara, he hurried to the best hotel in
the city and made arrangements for what he meant should be an impressive
scene, the announcement of her fortune. He secured fine rooms for the
ladies, and ordered them a handsome lunch, with wine, etc., all without
regard to expense. The girl must be perfectly comfortable and under a
sense of all sorts of obligations to him when she received his _coup de
theatre_.

He was not so preoccupied but that he quarelled with his coachman about
the hack hire and dismissed him with some disagreeable epithets in
Spanish. Next he took a saddle-horse, as being the cheapest conveyance
attainable, and cantered off to find the executors of Munoz, enjoying
heartily such stares of admiration as he got for his splendid riding. In
an