Up over the sandy river-bed came the two strangers, and Mariquita stood awaiting them.

The woman might be thirty, and was, she perceived (to whom a saddle was easier than a chair) unused to riding. She was a pretty woman, with a sort of foolish amiability of manner that might mean nothing. The man was younger—perhaps by three years, and rode as if he had always known how to do it, but without being saddle-bred, without living chiefly on horseback.

His companion was much aware of his being handsome, but Mariquita did not think of that. She, however, liked him immediately—much better than she liked the lady. The lady was not, in fact, quite a lady; but the young man was a gentleman; and perhaps Mariquita had never known one.

"Is this," inquired the blonde lady—pointing, though inaccurately, as if to indicate Mariquita's home, "where Mr. Xeres lives, please?"

She pronounced the X like the x's in Artaxerxes.

"Certainly. He is my father."

"Then your mother is my Aunt Margaret," said the lady in the smart clothes that looked so queer on an equestrian.

"My mother unfortunately is dead," Mariquita informed her, with a simplicity that made the wide-open blue eyes open wider still, and caused their owner to decide that the girl was "awfully Spanish."

Miss Sarah Jackson assumed (with admirable readiness) an expression of pathos.

"How very sad! I do apologize," she murmured, as if the decease of her aunt were partly her fault.

The young man was amused—not for the first time—by his fellow-traveller: but he did not show it.

"You couldn't help it," said Mariquita.

("How very Spanish!" thought her cousin.)

"Of course you did not know," the girl added, "or you would not have said anything to hurt me. And my mother's death happened five years ago."

"Not really!" cried the deceased lady's niece. "How wholly unexpected!"

"It wasn't very sudden," Mariquita explained. "She was ill for three months."

"My father was quite unaware of it—entirely so. He died, in fact, just about that time. And Aunt Margaret and he were (so unfortunately!) hardly on terms. Personally I always (though a child) had the strongest affection for Aunt Margaret. I took her part about her marriage. Papa's own second marriage struck me as less defensible."

"My father only married once," said Mariquita; "he is a widower."

"Oh, quite so! I wish mine had remained so. My stepmother—but we all have our faults, no doubt. We did not live agreeably after her third marriage—" (Mariquita was getting giddy, and so, perhaps, was Miss Jackson's fellow-traveller.)

"I could not, in fact, live," that lady serenely continued, with a smile of lingering sweetness, "and finally we differed completely. (Not noisily, on my part, nor roughly but irrevocably.) Hence my resolve to turn to Aunt Margaret, and my presence here—blood is thicker than water, when you come to think of it."

"I met Miss Jackson at ——," her fellow-traveller explained, "and we made acquaintance—"

"Introduced by Mrs. Plosher," Miss Jackson put in again with singular sweetness. "Mrs. Plosher's boarding-house was recommended to me by two ministers. Mr. Gore was likewise her guest, and coming, as she was aware, to your father's."

Don Joaquin, besides the regular cowboys, had from time to time taken a sort of pupil or apprentice, who paid instead of being paid. Mariquita had not been informed that this Mr. Gore was expected.

"So," Mr. Gore added, "I begged Miss Jackson to use one of my horses, and I have been her escort."

"So coincidental!" observed that lady, shaking her head slightly. "Though really—now I find my aunt no longer presiding here—I really——"