en of the
_almarjal_. She went out but seldom, and then accompanied by one or the
other of her female servants, in long drives on unfrequented roads. On
Sundays she sometimes drove to the half ruined mission church of Santa
Inez, and hid herself, during mass, in the dim monastic shadows of the
choir. Gradually the poorer people whom she met in these journeys began
to show an almost devotional reverence for her, stopping in the roads
with uncovered heads for her to pass, or making way for her in the
_tienda_ or _plaza_ of the wretched town with dumb courtesy. She began
to feel a strange sense of widowhood, that, while it at times brought
tears to her eyes, was not without a certain tender solace. In the
sympathy and simpleness of this impulse she went as far as to revive
the mourning she had worn for her parents, but with such a fatal
accenting of her beauty, and dangerous misinterpreting of her condition
to eligible bachelors strange to the country, that she was obliged to
put it off again. Her reserved and dignified manner caused others to
mistake her nationality for that of the Santierras, and in "Dona Bella"
the simple Mrs. Tucker was for a while forgotten. At times she even
forgot it herself. Accustomed now almost entirely to the accents of
another language and the features of another race, she would sit for
hours in the corridor, whose massive bronzed enclosure even her
tasteful care could only make an embowered mausoleum of the Past, or
gaze abstractedly from the dark embrasures of her windows across the
stretching _almarjal_ to the shining lagoon beyond that terminated the
estuary. She had a strange fondness for this tranquil mirror, which
under sun or stars always retained the passive reflex of the sky above,
and seemed to rest her weary eyes. She had objected to one of the plans
projected by Poindexter to redeem the land and deepen the water at the
_embarcadero_, as it would have drained the lagoon, and the lawyer had
postponed the improvement to gratify her fancy. So she kept it through
the long summer unchanged save by the shadows of passing wings or the
lazy files of sleeping sea-fowl.

On one of these afternoons she noticed a slowly moving carriage leave
the highroad and cross the _almarjal_ skirting the edge of the lagoon.
If it contained visitors for Los Cuervos they had evidently taken a
shorter cut without waiting to go on to the regular road which
intersected the highway at right angles a mile farther