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