n she is of age. I
suppose you know if any of the family are still living?"

"I really do not."

"I beg your pardon," said Mrs. Woods, with a smile. "I forgot it's a
profound secret until then. But here we are at the house; I see the
girls have walked over to our neighbors'. Perhaps you would like to
have a few moments to yourself before you dress for dinner, and your
portmanteau, which has been sent for, comes from your hotel. You must
be tired of seeing so many people."

Paul was glad to accept any excuse for being alone, and, thanking his
hostess, followed a servant to his room--a low-ceilinged but
luxuriously furnished apartment on the first floor. Here he threw
himself on a cushioned lounge that filled the angle of the deep
embrasure--the thickness of the old adobe walls--that formed a part of
the wooden-latticed window. A Cape jessamine climbing beside it filled
the room with its subtle, intoxicating perfume. It was so strong, and
he felt himself so irresistibly overpowered and impelled towards a
merely idle reverie, that, in order to think more clearly and shut out
some strange and unreasoning enthrallment of his senses, he rose and
sharply closed the window. Then he sat down and reflected.

What was he doing here? and what was the meaning of all this? He had
come simply to fulfill a duty to his past, and please a helpless and
misunderstood old acquaintance. He had performed that duty. But he
had incidentally learned a certain fact that might be important to this
friend, and clearly his duty was simply to go back and report it. He
would gain nothing more in the way of corroboration of it by staying
now, if further corroboration were required. Colonel Pendleton had
already been uselessly and absurdly perplexed about the possible
discovery of the girl's parentage, and its effect upon her fortunes and
herself. She had just settled that of her own accord, and, without
committing herself or others, had suggested a really sensible plan by
which all trouble would be avoided in future. That was the
common-sense way of looking at it. He would lay the plan before the
colonel, have him judge of its expediency and its ethics--and even the
question whether she already knew the real truth, or was self-deceived.
That done, he would return to his own affairs in Sacramento. There was
nothing difficult in this, or that need worry him, only he could have
done it just as well an hour ago.

He opened the windo