ns between us."

"But, Clementina, you are wrong, believe me! Say that I have been
foolish, indiscreet, mad,--still the few who knew that I made these
inquiries on your father's behalf know nothing of my hopes of YOU!"

"But I do, and that is enough for me."

Even in the hopeless preoccupation of his passion he suddenly looked
at her with something of his old critical scrutiny. But she stood there
calm, concentrated, self-possessed and upright. Yes! it was possible
that the pride of this Southwestern shopkeepers daughter was greater
than his own.

"Then you banish me, Clementina?"

"It is we whom YOU have banished."

"Good-night."

"Good-by."

He bent for an instant over her cold hand, and then passed out into the
hall. She remained listening until the front door closed behind him.
Then she ran swiftly through the hall and up the staircase, with an
alacrity that seemed impossible to the stately goddess of a moment
before. When she had reached her bedroom and closed the door, so
exuberant still and so uncontrollable was her levity and action, that
without going round the bed which stood before her in the centre of
the room, she placed her two hands upon it and lightly vaulted sideways
across it to reach the window. There she watched the figure of Grant
crossing the moonlit square. Then turning back into the half-lit room,
she ran to the small dressing-glass placed at an angle on a toilet table
against the wall. With her palms grasping her knees she stooped
down suddenly and contemplated the mirror. It showed what no one but
Clementina had ever seen,--and she herself only at rare intervals,--the
laughing eyes and soul of a self-satisfied, material-minded, ordinary
country-girl!

CHAPER X.

But Mr. Lawrence Grant's character in certain circumstances would seem
to have as startling and inexplicable contradictions as Clementina
Harcourt's, and three days later he halted his horse at the entrance of
Los Gatos Rancho. The Home of the Cats--so called from the catamounts
which infested the locality--which had for over a century lazily basked
before one of the hottest canyons in the Coast Range, had lately been
stirred into some activity by the American, Don Diego Fletcher, who had
bought it, put up a saw-mill, and deforested the canyon. Still there
remained enough suggestion of a feline haunt about it to make Grant
feel as if he had tracked hither some stealthy enemy, in spite of the
peaceful intimation con