Delfina had jogged along very comfortably. She was an
exemplary wife, a devoted mother, and as excellent a housekeeper as
became her traditions. He made a kind and indulgent husband, and if
neither found much to say to the other, their brief conversations were
amiable. Enrique developed no wit with the years, but he was always a
courteous host and played a good game of billiards, besides taking a
mild interest in the affairs of the nation. John soon fell into the
habit of spending two nights a week at the Rancho de los Olivos, and
never failed to fill his pockets with sweets for the little girls, who
preferred him to their father.

And his love! He used to fancy it was buried somewhere in the mausoleum
of flesh which had built itself about Delfina Carillo. She weighed two
hundred pounds, and her black hair and fine teeth were the only remnants
of her splendid beauty. Her face was large and brown, and although she
retained her dignity of carriage and moved with the old slow grace, she
looked what she was, the Spanish mother of many children.

The change was gradual, and brought no pang with it. John's memory was a
good one, and sometimes when it turned to his youth and the one passion
of his life, he felt something like a sob in his soul, a momentary echo
of the old agony. But it was only an echo; he had outgrown it all long
since. He sometimes wondered that he loved no other woman, why his
ambition to have an aristocratic wife had died with his first passion;
and concluded that the intensity of his nature had worn itself out in
that period of prolonged suffering, and that he was incapable of loving
again. And the experience had satisfied him that marriage without love
would be a poor affair. Once in a while, after leaving the plain
coffee-colored dame who filled the doorway as she waved him good-bye, he
sighed as he recalled the exquisite creature of his youth. But these
sighs grew less and less frequent, for not only was the grass high above
that old grave in his heart and he a busy and practical man, but the
Senora Ortega had become the most necessary of his friends. What she
lacked in brain she made up in sympathy, and she had developed a certain
amount of intelligence with the years. It became his habit to talk to
her of all his ambitions and plans, particularly after the death of
Enrique, when they had many uninterrupted hours together.

Upon Ortega's death Talbot took charge of the estate at once, and into
the p