k there was a year or two difference," said Grant quietly.

"Yes, but your gallantry keeps you from telling the truth; which is that
the women, in cases of this kind, are much older and more experienced."

"Are they? Well, perhaps she is, NOW. She is dead."

Mrs. Ashwood walked her horse. "Poor thing," she said. Then a sudden
idea took possession of her and brought a film to her eyes. "How long
ago?" she asked in a low voice.

"About six or seven months, I think. I believe there was a baby who died
too."

She continued to walk her horse slowly, stroking its curved neck. "I
think it's perfectly shameful!" she said suddenly.

"Not so bad as that, Mrs. Ashwood, surely. The girl may have loved
him--and he"--

"You know perfectly what I mean, Mr. Grant. I speak of the conduct of
the mother and father and those two sisters!"

Grant slightly elevated his eyebrows. "But you forget, Mrs. Ashwood. It
was young Harcourt and his wife's own act. They preferred to take their
own path and keep it."

"I think," said Mrs. Ashwood authoritatively, "that the idea of leaving
those two unfortunate children to suffer and struggle on alone--out
there--on the sand hills of San Francisco--was simply disgraceful!"

Later that evening she was unreasonably annoyed to find that her
brother, Mr. John Shipley, had taken advantage of the absence of Grant
to pay marked attention to Clementina, and had even prevailed upon that
imperious goddess to accompany him after dinner on a moonlight stroll
upon the veranda and terraces of Los Pajaros. Nevertheless she seemed to
recover her spirits enough to talk volubly of the beautiful scenery
she had discovered in her late perilous abandonment in the wilds of the
Coast Range; to aver her intention to visit it again; to speak of it in
a severely practical way as offering a far better site for the cottages
of the young married couples just beginning life than the outskirts of
towns or the bleak sand hills of San Francisco; and thence by graceful
degrees into a dissertation upon popular fallacies in regard to hasty
marriages, and the mistaken idea of some parents in not accepting the
inevitable and making the best of it. She still found time to enter
into an appreciative and exhaustive criticism upon the literature and
journalistic enterprise of the Pacific Coast with the proprietor of the
"Pioneer," and to cause that gentleman to declare that whatever people
might say about rich and fashionable Eastern