!" asked Aunt Katrina,
languidly.

"About fifteen hundred dollars, I believe. But you must remember that
without it those children, probably, will have nothing but that
mortgaged land."

"I don't think the people here know or care whether they've got money or
not," said Aunt Katrina, in a disgusted tone.

"No, they don't. Probably that is one of the reasons why I like them so
well."

"Yet _you_ have a clear idea of the value of property, Evert."

"I should think I had! I've worked for it--my idea."

"Tell me one thing," pursued Aunt Katrina, whose mind was now on her
nephew's affairs. "When you went north last month, wasn't it on account
of something connected with that cousin of yours, or rather of your
father's, David Winthrop?"

"Well, David has great capacity: he is really wonderful," answered
Winthrop, coming out of his reverie to smile at the remembrance of the
ineffectual man. "In spite of the new partnership, he _had_ managed to
tangle up everything almost worse than before."

"Yet people call you hard!" commented Aunt Katrina, plaintively.

"I am hard, I spend half my time trying not to be," responded her
nephew, in what she called one of his puzzling tones. Aunt Katrina
sometimes found Evert very puzzling.

Madam Giron had finally decided to follow the advice of Dr. Kirby, which
was, and had been unwaveringly from the beginning, to go. For she could
not but be aware that the Doctor had a very extensive acquaintance with
life, that he was more truly a man of the world than any one they had in
Gracias; she mentioned this during a confidential interview she had with
his mother. The Doctor, of course, was not surprised by her statement;
he could not help knowing that he was.

Madam Giron, therefore, had left her children with Madam Ruiz, closed
her house, and started, accompanied by the disapproving Torres, three
days before Lucian's arrival at her locked door.

The wagon which had brought him was well on its way back towards
Gracias; he had walked up the long, winding path which led to the house,
leaving his luggage piled at the distant gate. He turned and stood a
moment on the piazza, meditating upon what he should do. Then he left
the piazza and went towards the branch, where was the cabin of old Cajo,
Madam Giron's factotum. Cajo's wife, Juana, was cook at the "big house,"
and the two old servants were delighted to extend the hospitality which
their mistress, they knew, would have immediately or