t his place sounds nice, and I
like bein' with him pretty well. He's lit up with bright ideas and maybe
he'll pass on some to me. His business won't keep him long, he thinks; and
he's promised his brother James to look after a lady who's landing from
Europe about the time we're due in New York. He'll meet her ship; and if
she doesn't want to stay East any length of time, he'll bring her back to
California. She means to settle out here."

Carmen's face hardened into anxious lines, though she kept up a smile of
interest. She looked older than she had looked when she held out her hands
to Nick. She had been about twenty-six then. Now she was over thirty.

"Is the lady young or old?" she asked.

"I don't know anything about her," Nick answered with a ring of
truthfulness in his voice which Carmen's keen ears accepted. "All I can
tell you is, that she's a Mrs. May, a relation or friend of Franklin
Merriam the big California millionaire who died East about ten years
ago--about the time I was first cowpunching on your ranch."

"Oh, the Franklin Merriam who made such stacks of money irrigating desert
land he owned somewhere in the southern part of the State!" Carmen sighed
with relief. "I've heard of him of course. He must have been middle-aged
when he died, so probably this woman's old or oldish."

"I suppose so," Nick readily agreed. "Great king, isn't it mighty sweet
here to-night? It looks like heaven, I guess, and you're like--like----"

"If this is heaven, am I an angel? _Do_ I seem like that to you?"

"Well, no--not exactly my idea of an angel, somehow: though I don't know,"
he reflected aloud. "You're sure handsome enough--for anything, Mrs.
Gaylor. But I've always thought of angels lily white, with moonlight hair
and starry eyes."

"You're quite poetical!" retorted Carmen, piqued. "But other men have told
me my eyes are stars."

He looked straight into them, and at the hot pomegranate colour which
blazed up in her olive cheeks, like a reflection of the sunset. And
Carmen looked back at him with her big, splendid eyes.

It was a man's look he gave her, a man's look at a woman; but not a man's
look at the woman he wants.

"No," he answered. "They're not stars. They're more like the sun at noon
in midsummer, when so many flowers are pourin' out perfume you can hardly
keep your senses."

Carmen was no longer hurt. "That's the best compliment I ever had, and
I've had a good many," she laughed. "Besides--coming