and more satisfactory than she should have imagined
of such immaterial union. And some day, she believed, he would write to
her. He had spoken authoritatively of the permanence of their
friendship, and of its necessity to him. He had not loved her, as men
count love, but for a little she had been to him something more than
other women had been. The spiritual sympathy which had been rudely
interrupted, but had surely existed, taught her this. In time he would
become conscious again of the bond, and his letters alone would be
something to live for.

And she had much else. In the evenings when her father was weeding on
the lawn, she devoted herself to her uncle; and he seemed grateful for
her attentions, slight as was his response. He was visibly shrinking to
his skeleton, although he neither coughed nor complained, and went to
town every morning with the regularity of his youth. But his gaunt face
was less savagely determined, his eyes had lost the hard surface of
metal; and one evening when Magdalena slipped her hand into his, he
clasped and held it until Don Roberto, gloomy and perspiring, came
panting across the drive.

And almost immediately Magdalena began to write. She did not go to her
nook in the woods, but after her morning ride she wrote in her room
until luncheon. She told her mother of her literary plans and asked her
advice about making a similar announcement to her father. Between
astonishment and consternation Mrs. Yorba gasped audibly, and her
impassive countenance looked as if the hinges had fallen out of its
muscles.

"For God's sake don't tell your father!" she exclaimed; and she was not
given to strong language. "I don't believe you can write, anyhow, and we
should only have a terrible scene for nothing."

Magdalena accepted the advice. Her father showed so little sense of his
duty as a parent that her own was growing adaptable to circumstances,
although she was still determined not to publish without his knowledge.
She had not returned to her English romance: that had been consigned to
the flames, and was now meditating in that limbo which receives the
wraiths of the lame, the halt, and the blind of abortive talent. She was
at work upon the simplest of the Old-Californian tales.

On the Saturday afternoon after Helena's departure for Monterey Rose
called and invited Magdalena to drive with her to the train to meet Mr.
Geary. Tiny and Ila, who were with her, added their insistence, and
Magdalena