Thorpe dressed for dinner, pocketed a roll of the gold with a wry face, and went to the sala, a long room opening on the middle corridor. Prudencia, in a red-satin gown, so thick that it stood out about her as if hooped, and flashing jewels on a great deal of white skin, her hair piled high and surmounted with a diamond comb, sat in the middle of the room talking volubly to her sister-in-law, who stood by the mantel looking sadly about her. Chonita had lost little of her beauty. She had had but two children; and vanity had kept the lines of her figure, the gliding grace of her walk, unchanged. She had known, during the twenty years of her married life, the great joys and the great disappointments, the exaltation and the terrified recognition of mortal weakness and limitations, inseparable to two such natures. But, on the whole, she was happy, and she and her husband were very nearly one.

“No, no, my Chonita!” Prudencia was exclaiming in her own tongue. “Why shouldst thou be sad? It is nearly twenty years; one cannot remember so long. Thou hast thine own house, far more elegant than this, I am told: why shouldst thou feel sad to come back? Thou art wealthy, and hast a devoted husband,—ay de mi, my Reinaldo! (but I could have had others),—and art as beautiful as ever, although I do not agree with some that thou hast not grown a day older. Thou hast the expression of years, if not its lines and grey hairs. I need not have grown stout; but I have no vanity, and walking is such trouble, and I love dulces. Besides, we do not carry our flesh into the next world; so Reinaldo, who hated fat women—Ay, SeÑor Torp, pardon me, no? I not did see you. I wish mooch to present you to my sister-in-law—DoÑa Chonita Iturbi y Moncada de Estenega, SeÑor Torp of Eengland, mijita.”

Chonita came forward and held out her hand, smiling. “I remember meeting you in Austria,” she said. “It was so warm that night in the palace, I remember, it made me talk of California to you. My husband is very glad to think that he shall meet you again.”

“I am glad you come to cheer her up, SeÑor Torp,” said Prudencia. “She feel blue because coming to the old house once more.”

Thorpe looked at Chonita with the quick sympathy of the Englishman for terra ego, and Chonita flashed her acknowledgment. “Yes, I am a little sad,” she said; “not only because it is the first time in so many years, but because it is probably for the last time in my life. My husband does not care for California. Here he is.”

Estenega entered with several other men, and, recognising Thorpe at once, greeted him with a warmth that was more cosmopolitan than Californian, but none the less sincere. He showed the wear and tear of years. Ambitions, scheming, hard work had left their furrows, and the grey was in his hair. But his nervous vitality was undiminished, and his air of command even more pronounced than in the old days. He carried Thorpe off to discuss the growing complications between the North and South; and the conversation was resumed after dinner, despite the attractions of the sala; for news of the great world came infrequently to California, and the stranger who had recently lived in the midst of affairs was a welcome acquisition. Thorpe spent the greater part of the night in the billiard-room with Reinaldo, and got rid of his gold.