Mrs. Polk's large white face and throat had seemed to shed a measure of light in the dark house; when she left, the gloom seemed to get down and sit on one. Helena refused to enter by the front door, and lamenting that she was too big to climb the pillar, paid her visits by way of the kitchen and back stairs.

After the calls of condolence visitors came more and more rarely to the Yorba house. They said it depressed them for days after, and that while there they sat in mortal terror of hearing Don Roberto burst out of his den with the yell of a maniac. And as for dear Mrs. Yorba and MagdalÉna, they never had had much to say, but now they had nothing. They would not drop off altogether, for the old don was bound to follow his brother-in-law in course of time, and then his widow would once more be a useful member of society. Mrs. Montgomery, Mrs. Geary, and Mrs. Cartright were more faithful than the others, but the affections Mrs. Yorba had inspired during her long and distinguished sojourn in San Francisco were not very deep and warm.

The girls were sorry for MagdalÉna, and called frequently, conquering their horror of the gloomy echoing house; but they had less to endure than their elders, for they were received in MagdalÉna's own sitting-room, which, although sparsely and tastelessly furnished, was always as cheerful as the weather would permit. They brought her all the gossip of the outside world, discussed the new novels with her, and occasionally induced her to spend a day with them.

At the end of the winter Ila was married; very grandly, in Grace Church. All her friends but MagdalÉna were bridesmaids. The omission was a serious one, and all felt that it robbed the function of a last fine finish: each of the girls had counted upon having the last of the Yorbas for chief bridesmaid. MagdalÉna went and sat in a corner of the church and saw the first of her friends break the circle of their girlhood. Her present had been very meagre: it had come out of her monthly allowance. Mrs. Polk was much too indolent to consider whether her niece was allowed an income suitable for her position or not, and MagdalÉna was much too proud to ask favours. She slipped out of the church just before the end of the ceremony, feeling like a poor relation.

She rarely saw her father. Occasionally she met him in the hall; he drifted past her like a ghost. Mr. Polk died in February. On the first of June Don Roberto had not been out of the house for three months, nor had he exchanged a word with his wife or daughter.

"He'll blink like an owl when he does go out," said Mrs. Yorba. "I wonder if he remembers that it is time to go to the country?"

"He never forgets anything. I'll pack his things if you like."

But the day passed and the next, and Don Roberto gave no sign of remembering that it was time to move. Then Mrs. Yorba drew several long breaths, went downstairs, and knocked at his door. There was no response, but she turned the knob and went in. Don Roberto's face was between the large pages of a ledger. He looked round with a scowl.

"Everything is ready to move down. Are you not coming?"

"No; and you no going either. Letting the place."

If the President of the United States had let the White House, Mrs. Yorba could not have been more astounded.

"Let Fair Oaks! Fair Oaks?"

"Yes."

"And where are we to go this summer?"

"We stay here."

"Robert! You cannot mean that. No one stays here in summer. The city is impossible—those trade-winds—those fogs—"

"Need not go out. Can stay in the house." And Don Roberto returned to his ledger.

Mrs. Yorba went straight to MagdalÉna's room, and for the first time in her daughter's experience of her, wept.

"To think of spending a summer in San Francisco! How I have looked forward to the summer! Things are always bright and cheerful in Menlo even with the house shut up, for one can sit on the verandah. But here! And not a soul in town! And the house like a prison! What in Heaven's name ails your father? He's not crazy. He's reading his ledgers, and what he says is to the point, goodness knows! But I shall follow Hiram if this keeps up. You're a real comfort to me, 'LÉna. I don't know what I should do without you."

MagdalÉna said what she could to console her mother. The two had drawn together during these trying months. She was bitterly disappointed that she could not go to Menlo Park. She was tired of its efforts to amuse itself, but she could live in its woods, its soft gracious air, find companionship in the distant redwoods swimming in their dark-blue mists.

The girls all invited her to visit them, but she would not leave her mother, even could her father's consent be obtained. Mrs. Yorba was genuinely unhappy. Without mental resources, and deprived of even an occasional hour with her friends, she was further harassed by the fear that her husband would die and leave her with a pittance: he certainly appeared to hate the sight of his family. It consoled her somewhat to reflect that wills were easily broken in California. Why had her brother left her nothing? With a full purse she could at least have the distractions of philanthropy. She took to novel-reading with a voracious appetite, and her taste grew so exacting that she would have nothing that was not magnificently sensational. She thought on Boston with a shudder, but concluded that it was enough to have been intellectual when young.

MagdalÉna plodded on with her work. She described the customs and manners of the old times with much accuracy, and felt that her beloved creations were rather more than puppets; and it was as much for their sake as for her own that she wanted these little histories to be triumphs of art, that they might arrest the attention of the world. Alvarado and Castro were great heroes to her: it was unjust and cruel that the big world outside of California should know nothing of them; to the present Californian, for that matter, they were not even names. And forty years before the Californias had bent to their nod! They had lived with the state of princes, and the wisdom with which the one had ruled and the other had managed his armies would have given them lasting fame had not their country then been as remote from Earth's greater civilisations as had it been on Jupiter. If she could only immortalise them! That would be a sufficient reason for living, compensate her for the wreck of her personal life. It might take a lifetime, but what of that if she succeeded in the end?

She took long walks daily; alone, for the French maid had been dismissed long since. The walks were not pleasant, for when the sand from the outlying dunes was not swept through the city by the bitter trades, the fog was crawling into one's very marrow. And the hills were steep. Sometimes she took the cable car to the end of the line, then walked to the Presidio; but that brought the sand-hills nearer, and she went home with smarting eyes. Protected by her window, she found beauty even in the summer mood of San Francisco; and sometimes she went up into the tower of the Belmont house and watched the long clouds of dust roll symmetrically down the streets of the city's valleys; or the delicate white mist ride through the Golden Gate to wreathe itself about the cross on Calvary, then creep down the bare brown cone to press close about the tombs on Lone Mountain; then onward until all the city was gone under a white swinging ocean; except the points of the hills disfigured with the excrescences of the rich. Into the caÑons and rifts of the hills beyond the blue bay the fog crept daintily at first, hanging in festoons so light that the very trades held aloof, then advancing with a rush,—a phantom of the booming ocean whence it came.

And Trennahan? He made no sign. Whether he were dead or alive, the victim or the captor of his old familiars, careless, or nursing an open wound, MagdalÉna was miserably ignorant. The time had come when she waited tensely as mails were due, feeling that an empty envelope covered with his handwriting would give her solace. She cherished no hope that he would ever return to her, but he had promised her his lasting friendship. Sometimes she wondered at the cruelty of men. Why should he not help her? Even if he really believed in the extinction of her love, he might guess that she needed his friendship. She had yet to learn that the one thing that man never gives to woman is spiritual help.

Helena wrote that her father was so anxious for her to marry Alan Rush that she was officially engaged to that much-enduring youth and really liked him. Menlo Park was the same as ever; not so gay as last year, but the same in quality. No one had called on the lessees of Fair Oaks. They were new people whom nobody knew, and it would be horrid to go there, anyhow. Caro was engaged to marry an Englishman who had bought a grape-ranch some twenty miles from Menlo. Tiny was prettier and more bored than usual. Rose wrote that she certainly could not stand another summer of Menlo and should go East in the autumn. Ila wrote from Paris, London, and Homburg that life was quite perfect. It was so interesting to be named Washington,—everybody stared so; as the English had never read a line of United States history, they thought her George was a lineal descendant of the immortal head of his house; and she had thirty-two trunks of Paris clothes and ever so many men in love with her.

And MagdalÉna lived this life for three years. Its monotony was broken by one event only.