lt that he ought to admire Miss Dene, for she was handsome, and put
herself out to be kind to him; but he wished the girl away, and was glad
that to-morrow she would be travelling with her own friends. When she
looked at him with her greenish eyes, she had the air of judging his
points, as if he were a portrait she thought of adding to her collection,
and of wishing him to look at her. Nick was not to be fascinated in this
way.

Along the Cliff Drive they went to the Hope Ranch, and Angela tried to
think of the brave old days of the "Roaring Forties," of barbecues, and
wedding feasts for Spanish brides--days when the business of life was to
love, and laugh, and dance, and spend the money yielded by thousands of
rolling acres. According to the stories, all women had been beautiful, all
men brave, and ready to fight for the ladies they loved; and though the
world had changed since then, faster here than elsewhere, it seemed to her
that at heart the men of America had kept to old traditions more closely
than men in older countries. Then she smiled at herself for this
impression; for, after all, what did she know of American men?

When they turned at last, coming back toward the Mission, to which,
somehow, all the rest had been leading up, the setting sun was beating the
dusk into sparks of fire.

At first glimpse, alighting before the steps of the restored Mission
church, Angela compared it unfavourably in her mind with the lovely
shabbiness of San Gabriel. She had a feeling that Santa Barbara the
pleasure-place lived on Santa Barbara the Mission, with its history and
romance. But she had only to go inside to beg pardon of the church for her
first impression. It was easy to remember that there had never been the
same stress of poverty here as among the missionary Fathers of San
Gabriel, in the City of Angela. Yet in this place, too, there was the same
pathetic effect which had brought tears to Angela's eyes in the dim little
church at San Gabriel; an effect that once felt and understood, gives the
old Spanish Missions their great, undying charm. At Santa Barbara--sweet
name, ringing like the silver bells of the Franciscan Fathers--as at San
Gabriel, there had been the same striving to copy the noble designs and
proportions of the Spanish cathedrals, visioned in spirit by the homesick
monks, who knew well they would never see them with bodily eyes again.
With simple materials and unskilled Indian workers, these exiled men