ered HIM? Her words rose distinctly in the evening air.

"You're a gentleman, Don Miguel Briones; and the least respect I can
show a man of your kind is not to pretend that I don't understand the
sacrifice you're making. I shall always remember it as about the biggest
compliment I ever received, and the biggest risk that any man--except
one--ever ran for me. But as the man who ran that bigger risk isn't here
to speak for himself, and generally trusts his wife, Susan Markham, to
speak for him--it's all the same as if HE thanked you. There's my hand,
Don Miguel: shake it. Well--if you prefer it--kiss it then. There--don't
be a fool--but let's go back to Miss Keene."

CHAPTER IV.

A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE.

While these various passions had been kindled by her compatriots in
the peaceful ashes of Todos Santos, Eleanor Keene had moved among them
indifferently and, at times, unconsciously. The stranding of her young
life on that unknown shore had not drawn her towards her fellow-exiles,
and the circumstances which afterwards separated her from daily contact
with them completed the social estrangement. She found herself more in
sympathy with the natives, to whom she had shown no familiarity,
than with her own people, who had mixed with them more or less
contemptuously. She found the naivete of Dona Isabel more amusing than
the doubtful simplicity of that married ingenue Mrs. Brimmer, although
she still met the young girl's advances with a certain reserve. She
found herself often pained by the practical brusqueness with which Mrs.
Markham put aside the Comandante's delicate attentions, and she was
moved with a strange pity for his childlike trustfulness, which she knew
was hopeless. As the months passed, on the few occasions that she still
met the Excelsior's passengers she was surprised to find how they
had faded from her memory, and to discover in them the existence of
qualities that made her wonder how she could have ever been familiar
with them. She reproached herself with this fickleness; she wondered
if she would have felt thus if they had completed their voyage to San
Francisco together; and she recalled, with a sad smile, the enthusiastic
plans they had formed during the passage to perpetuate their fellowship
by anniversaries and festivals. But she, at last, succumbed, and finally
accepted their open alienation as preferable to the growing awkwardness
of their chance encounters.

For a few weeks following the fl