utifully kept him company, and the
whiskey having made him unusually amiable, he talked more than was his
wont with the women of his family. In his way he was fond of his
daughter, deeply as she had disappointed him; and, had she known how to
manage him, doubtless her girlish wants would have met with few rebuffs.
But that would have meant another Magdalena.

"I like this Trennahan," he announced. "He prefer talk with me than with
the young mens, and he know plenty good stories, by Jimminy! He have
call on me at the bank three times, and I have lunch with him one day.
Damn good lunch. He is what Jack call thoroughbred, and have the manners
very fine. I like have him much for the neighbour. He ask myself and
Eeram and Washeengton to have the dinner with him on Thursday and warm
the house. He understand the good wine and the tabac, by Scott! I feel
please si he ask me plenty time, and I have him here often."

Magdalena was delighted with these unexpected sentiments. She pressed
her lips together twice, then said,--

"He asked me if I could ride again with him to-morrow morning."

"I have not the objection to you ride all you want it with Mr.
Trennahan, si you not go outside the place. Need not take that boy, for
he have the work; and I have trust in Mr. Trennahan."

He would, indeed, have welcomed Trennahan as a son-in-law. Magdalena
must inherit his wealth as well as the immense fortune of her uncle;
neither of these worthy gentlemen had the least ambition to be
caricatured in bronze and accumulate green mould as public benefactors.
Nor did Don Roberto regret that he had no son, having the most profound
contempt for the sons of rich men, as they circled within his horizon.
It would be one of the terms of his will that Magdalena's first son
should be named Yorba, and that the name should be perpetuated in this
manner until California should shake herself into the sea.

He had long since determined that Magdalena should marry no one of the
sons of his moneyed friends, nor yet any of the sprouting lawyers or
unfledged business youths who made up the masculine half of the younger
fashionable set. Nor would he leave his money in trust for trustees to
fatten on. Ever since Magdalena's sixteenth birthday he had been on the
look-out for a son-in-law to his pattern. The New Yorker suited him. A
wealthy man himself, Trennahan's motives could not be misconstrued. His
birth and breeding were all that could be desired, even of a