his horse, for here were many old oak-trees
and the atmosphere was twenty degrees cooler. A Mexican servant met him,
and he dismounted and walked the few remaining yards to the house. He
sighed as he remembered that Herminia, the last of the girls to marry,
had been there to kiss him on his last birthday. He would gladly have
had all four back again, and now they had passed out of his life
forever.

The Casa Ortega was a very long adobe house one story in height and one
room deep, except in an ell where a number of rooms were bunched
together. The Senora had it whitewashed every year, and the red tiles on
the roof renewed when necessary; therefore it had none of the pathetic
look of old age peculiar to the adobe mansions of the dead grandees.

A long veranda traversed the front, supported by pillars and furnished
with gayly painted chairs; but it was empty, and Talbot entered the
_sala_ at once. It was a long room, severely furnished in the old style,
and facing the door was a painting of Delfina Carillo. Talbot rarely
allowed his eyes to wander to this portrait. Had he dared he would have
asked for its removal. The grass was long above the grave, but there
were such things as ghosts.

The Senora was sitting in a corner of the dim cool room, and rose at
once to greet him. She came forward with a grace and dignity of carriage
that still had the power to prick his admiration. But she was very dark,
and the old enchanting smile had lost its way long since in the large
cheeks and heavy chin. Even her eyes no longer looked big, and the
famous lashes had been worn down by many tears; for there were six
little graves in the Ortega corner of the Mission church-yard, and she
had loved her children devotedly. She carried her two hundred pounds as
unconsciously as she had once carried her willowy inches, and she wore
soft black cashmere in winter and lawn in summer, fastened at the throat
with a miniature of the husband of her youth. She was only thirty-nine,
but there was not a vestige of youth about her anywhere, and her whole
being expressed a life lived, and a sleepy contentment with the fact.
Talbot often wondered if she had no hours of insupportable loneliness;
but she gave no sign, and he concluded that novels and religion
sufficed.

"So hot it is, no?" she said in her soft hardly audible tones, that,
like her carriage and manner, were unchanged. "You have the face very
red, but feel better in a little while. Very cool