"Just you leave well alone," said Sarella, a little more didactically than Don Joaquin cared for. "Things are going as well as can be expected" (and here she laughed a little); "they're moving now."

Don Joaquin urged his opinion that Mariquita ought to be enlightened as to his approval of her suitor.

Sarella answered, with plain impatience, "If you tell her she has a suitor she won't have one. Don't you pry her eyes open with your thumb; let them open of themselves."

Don Joaquin only half understood this rhetoric, and he seldom liked what he could not understand.

He adopted a slightly primitive measure in reprisal—

"It isn't," he remarked pregnantly, "as if the young man were not a Catholic—I would not allow her to marry him if he were not."

"No?"

And it was quite clear to Don Joaquin that he had killed two birds with one stone; he saw that Sarella was both interested and impressed.

"Catholics should marry Catholics," he declared with decision.

"You didn't think so always," Sarella observed, smiling.

"If I forgot it, I suffered for it," her elderly admirer retorted.

Sarella was puzzled. She naturally had not the remotest suspicion that he had felt his wife's early death as a reprisal on the part of Heaven. She knew little of her aunt, and less of that aunt's married life. Had there been quarrels about religion?

"Well, I daresay you may be right," she said gravely. "Two religions in one house may lead to awkwardness."

"Yes. That is so," he agreed, with a completeness of conviction that considerably enlightened her.

"And after all," she went on, smiling with great sweetness, "they're only two branches of the same religion."

This was her way of hinting that the little bird he had married would have been wise to hop from her own religious twig to his.

This suggestion, however, Don Joaquin utterly repudiated.

"The same religion!" he said, with an energy that almost made Sarella jump. "The Catholic Church and heresy all one religion! Black and white the same color!"

Sarella was now convinced that he and his wife had fought on the subject. On such matters she was quite resolved there should be no fighting in her case; concerning expenditure it might be necessary to fight. But Sarella was an easy person who had no love for needless warfare, and she made up her mind at once.

"I understand, now you put it that way," she said amiably, "you're right again. Both can't be right, and the husband is the head of the wife."

Don Joaquin accepted this theory whole-heartedly, and nodded approvingly.

"How," he said, "can a Protestant mother bring up her Catholic son?"

Sarella laughed inwardly. So he had quite arranged the sex of his future family.

"But," she said with a remarkably swift riposte, "if Catholics should not marry Protestants, they have no business to make love to them. Have they?"

Her Catholic admirer looked a little silly, and she swore to herself that he was blushing.

"Because," she continued, entirely without blushing, "a Catholic gentleman made love to me once—"

"Perhaps," suggested Don Joaquin, recovering himself "he hoped you would become a Catholic, if you accepted him."

"I daresay," Sarella agreed very cheerfully.

"But you evidently did not accept him."

"As to that," she explained frankly, "he did not go quite so far as asking me to marry him."

"He drew back!"

"Not exactly. He was interrupted."

"But didn't he resume the subject?"

Sarella laughed.

"I'd rather not answer that question," she answered; "you're asking quite a few questions, aren't you?"

"I want to ask another. Did you like that Catholic gentleman well enough to share all he had, his religion, his name, and his home?"

Don Joaquin was not laughing, on the contrary, he was eagerly serious, and Sarella laughed no more.

"He never did ask me to share them," she replied with a self-possession that her elderly lover admired greatly.

"But he does. He is asking you. Sarella, will you share my religion, and my name, my home, and all that I have?"

Even now she was amused inwardly, not all caused by love. She noted, and was entertained by noting, how he put first among things she was to share, his religion—because he was not so sure of her willingness to share that as of her readiness to share his name and his goods, and meant to be sure, as she now quite understood. It did not make her respect him less. She had the sense to know that he would not make a worse husband for caring enough for his religion to make a condition of it, and she was grateful for the form in which he put the condition. He spared her the brutality of, "I will marry you if you will turn Catholic to marry me, but I won't if you refuse to do that."

She smiled again, but not lightly. "I think," she said, "you will need some one when Mariquita goes away to a home of her own. And I think I could make you comfortable and happy. I will try, anyway. And it would never make you happy and comfortable if we were of different religions. If my husband's is good enough for him, it must be good enough for me."

Poor Sarella! She was quite homeless, and quite penniless. She had not come here with any idea of finding a husband in this elderly Spaniard, but she could think of him as a husband, with no repugnance and with some satisfaction. He was respectable and trustworthy; she believed him to be as fond of her as it was in his nature to be fond of anybody. He had prudence and good sense. And his admiration pleased her; her own sense told her that she would get in marrying him as much as she could expect.

"Shall you tell Mariquita, or shall I?" she inquired before they parted.

"I will tell her. I am her father," he replied.

"Then, do not say anything about her moving off to a home of her own—"

"Why not?" he asked with some obstinacy. For in truth he had thought the opportunity would be a good one for "breaking ground."

"Because she will think we want to get rid of her; or she will think I do. Tell her, instead, that I will do my best to make her happy and comfortable. If I were you, I should tell her you count on our marriage making it pleasanter for her here."