ly as on
this day of Susy's return from the convent school at Santa Clara for the
holidays.

The woman and child had reached the broad veranda which, on one side of
the patio, replaced the old Spanish corridor. It was the single modern
innovation that Peyton had allowed himself when he had broken the
quadrangular symmetry of the old house with a wooden "annexe" or
addition beyond the walls. It made a pleasant lounging-place, shadowed
from the hot midday sun by sloping roofs and awnings, and sheltered from
the boisterous afternoon trade winds by the opposite side of the court.
But Susy did not seem inclined to linger there long that morning, in
spite of Mrs. Peyton's evident desire for a maternal tete-a-tete. The
nervous preoccupation and capricious ennui of an indulged child showed
in her pretty but discontented face, and knit her curved eyebrows, and
Peyton saw a look of pain pass over his wife's face as the young girl
suddenly and half-laughingly broke away and fluttered off towards the
old garden.

Mrs. Peyton looked up and caught her husband's eye.

"I am afraid Susy finds it more dull here every time she returns," she
said, with an apologetic smile. "I am glad she has invited one of her
school friends to come for a visit to-morrow. You know, yourself, John,"
she added, with a slight partisan attitude, "that the lonely old house
and wild plain are not particularly lively for young people, however
much they may suit YOUR ways."

"It certainly must be dull if she can't stand it for three weeks in
the year," said her husband dryly. "But we really cannot open the San
Francisco house for her summer vacation, nor can we move from the rancho
to a more fashionable locality. Besides, it will do her good to run
wild here. I can remember when she wasn't so fastidious. In fact, I was
thinking just now how changed she was from the day when we picked her
up"--

"How often am I to remind you, John," interrupted the lady, with some
impatience, "that we agreed never to speak of her past, or even to think
of her as anything but our own child. You know how it pains me! And the
poor dear herself has forgotten it, and thinks of us only as her own
parents. I really believe that if that wretched father and mother of
hers had not been killed by the Indians, or were to come to life again,
she would neither know them nor care for them. I mean, of course,
John," she said, averting her eyes from a slightly cynical smile on
her husband's