e as possible
concerning himself, except that he was an agreeable young man with fair
prospects; and thus far, thanks to the Captain's silence and her
ignorance of Spanish, he had succeeded admirably.

Fair prospects! The secret was almost too good to keep, and he laughed
softly to himself as he mused upon it. It was truly an inspiration; just
the sort of thing to hand out to one of Newport's smart-set. Although he
had not yet proposed to her, he regarded their marriage as a foregone
conclusion; an event of the near future. She certainly had led him to
infer as much, and the plan he had conceived regarding it was highly
ingenious--one worthy of his fertile imagination. Directly they were
married, they would spend the first fortnight of their honeymoon camping
in the mountains in a style worthy of a grand Mogul, after which he
would suggest that they pass the night at a near-by _rancho_ belonging
to a friend, and in this wise introduce her to her future home.

The rapture of the picture fairly dazzled him, and he lay awake whole
nights contemplating it--the _patio_ palely illumined by the moonlight,
the murmur of the fountain in its center, the perfume of flowers, the
melodious voices of the dark-skinned Indian attendants, bearing flaming
torches, and chanting the time-honored welcome to their new mistress,
and her insistent demands to be introduced to their host; and then the
delightful denouement, the surprise she must experience when the truth
finally dawned upon her. Truly poet never dreamed a fairer dream. It had
taken him a whole week to conceive the idea in detail, and on the
morning of the seventh day on which he had decided to ask her to become
his wife, he stood with the horses before the _Posada_ expectantly
awaiting her appearance to take the ride they had agreed upon the night
before. At the end of an hour, during which he fretted over the undue
delay with the same impatience as did the horses, Rosita appeared and
informed him that the Senorita Van Ashton would not ride that morning;
she was not feeling well. A wild alarm seized him. The thought that she
might have been stricken suddenly with some serious illness, quite
unnerved him for the moment. "_Caramba!_" he cried, quite forgetting his
English. "What has happened? Is it serious? Is anything being done?" But
all inquiries concerning the actual state of the Senorita's health
proving fruitless, he was left to pass the remainder of the day
wandering aimle