g
stick and wrapped in a heavy shawl. Never had Helen seen such
night-black, fathomless, inscrutable eyes; never had she looked upon a
face so creased and lined or skin so like dry, wrinkled parchment.

Angela pounded across the floor looking like a witch with her great
stick, and waved a bony hand to indicate the bathroom. Catching her
first glimpse of Longstreet, who came to his daughter's door, she
demanded:

'Your papa?'

'Yes,' Helen answered her.

'You frien's Senor Alan?' And when Helen, hesitating briefly, said
'Yes,' Angela asked:

'You come from Santa Rita, _no_?'

'No,' said Helen. 'From San Juan and beyond.'

'You come far,' mumbled Angela. She scrutinized the girl keenly. Then
abruptly, 'Senor Alan got _muchos amigos_ to-day. Senor Juan Carr
comes; El Joven with him.'

Helen asked politely who these two were Juan Carr and El Joven. But
the old woman merely shook her head and relapsed into silence frankly
studying her. The girl was glad of the interruption when Howard rapped
at the door. His arms were full of bundles.

'I've brought everything I could find that looked like your and your
father's personal traps,' he informed her as he came in and put the
things down on the floor. 'I looked in at the kitchen and figure it
out we've got about twenty or thirty minutes before dinner. Come on,
Angela; give Miss Longstreet a chance to get ready.'

Angela transferred her scrutiny to him; Howard laughed at her
good-humouredly, laid his hand gently on her shrunken shoulder and side
by side they went out.

Helen went singing into her bath, her weary body rested by the thought
of coolness and cleanliness and a change of clothing. Little enough
did she have in the way of clothing, especially for an evening when she
was to meet still other strangers. But certain feminine trinkets had
come with her journeying across the desert, and a freshly laundered
wash dress and a bit of bright ribbon work wonders. When she heard
voices in the _patio_, that of Alan Howard and of another man, this a
sonorous bass, she was ready. She went to her father's door;
Longstreet was in the final stages of his own toilet-making, his face
red and shiny from his towelling, his sparse hair on end, his whole
being in that condition of bewildering untidiness which comes just
before the ultimate desired orderliness quite as the thick darkness
before the dawn. In this case the rose fingers of Aurora were Helen's
own, pat