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articulars of her handsome income it never occurred to the widow to inquire. One by one the girls married, and Talbot dowered them all. They were pretty creatures, and John loved them, for each had in her face a morsel of Delfina Carillo's lost beauty; and if they recalled the pain of his youth they recalled its sweetness too. The Senora recalled neither. For the last year she had been quite alone. Two of her daughters lived in the city of Mexico. One had married a Spanish Consul and returned with him to Spain. The other lived in San Francisco, and as soon as domestic affairs would permit intended to visit her sisters. Talbot, when at home, called on the Senora once a week and always carried a novel or an illustrated paper in his saddle-bag. "Is the tragedy at this end or the other?" thought Talbot, as he walked up and down the Mission corridor on his fortieth birthday--"that I could not have her when I was mad about her, or that I can have her now and don't want her?" He knew that the Senora was lonesome in her big house and would have welcomed a companion, but he knew also that the desire moved sluggishly in the depths of her lazy mind. If he were willing, well and good. If otherwise, it mattered not much. His Indian servant cantered up with his horse, he gave a last regretful glance at the cool corridor of the Mission, and then went out into the hot sun. He was only a stone heavier than in the old days, but he rode more slowly, for this his favorite mare was no longer young. His day for breaking in bucking mustangs was over, and he liked an animal that would behave itself as became the four-footed companion of his years. The road through the pale green cotton-woods and willows that wooded the banks of the river--as dry as the heavens--was almost cold, and refreshingly dim; but when the bed and its fringe turned abruptly to the south his way led for five sweltering miles through sun-burned fields and over hills as yellow as polished gold. The sky looked like dark-blue metal in which a hole had been cut for a lake of fire. The heat it emptied quivered visibly in the parched fields, and the mountains swam in a purple haze. Talbot had a grape-leaf in his hat, and the suns of California had baked his complexion long since, but he wished that his birthday occurred in winter, as he had wished many a time before. It was an hour and a half before he rode into the grounds surrounding Casa Ortega. Then he spurred
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