Everyone on the range, from its owner down to old Jack, considered that Gore made much more way after his trip to Denver. Mariquita, it was decided, had, as it were, awakened to him. It was believed that she and he saw more of each other, and that she liked his company.

Sarella thought things were going so well that they had much better be left to themselves, and this view she strongly impressed upon Don Joaquin. He had gradually come to hold a higher opinion of her sense; at first he had been attracted entirely by her beauty. Her aunt had not been remarkable for intelligence, and he had not thought the niece could be expected to be wiser than her departed elder.

Sarella, on the other hand, did not think her admirer quite so sensible as he really was. That he was shrewd and successful in business, she knew, but was the less impressed that his methods had been slow and unhurried. To her eastern ideas there was nothing imposing (though extremely comfortable) in a moderate wealth accumulated by thirty years of patient work and stingy expenditure. But she was sure he did not in the least understand his own daughter, in whom she (who did not understand her any better than she would have understood Dante's Divina Commedia) saw nothing at all difficult to understand. The truth was that Don Joaquin had never understood any woman; without imagination, he could understand no sex but his own—and his experience of women was of the narrowest. Nevertheless, he was nearer to a sort of rough, nebulous perception of his daughter than was Sarella herself.

His saying that Mariquita would not "consider" Gore's good looks, a remark that Sarella thought merely ridiculous, was an illustration of this. In his explicit mind, in his conscious attitude towards Mariquita, he assumed that it was her business and duty to respect him. He was her parent, so placed by God, and he had a great and sincere reverence for such Divine appointments as placed himself in a condition of superiority. (Insubordination or insolence in the cowboys would have gravely and honestly scandalized him). All the same, in an inner mind that he never consulted, and whose instruction he was far from seeking, he knew that his daughter was a higher creature than himself; all he knew that he knew was that a young girl was necessarily more innocent and pure than an elderly man could be (he himself was no profligate); that in fact all women were more religious than men, and that it behooved them to be so; nature made it easier for them.

He had after deliberate consideration decided that it would be convenient and suitable that his daughter should marry Gore; the young man, he was sure, wished it, and, while the circumstances in which she was placed held little promise of a wide choice of husbands for her, he would, in Don Joaquin's opinion, make a quite suitable husband. To do him justice, he would never have manoeuvred to bring Gore into a marriage with Mariquita, had he appeared indifferent to the girl, or had he seemed in any way unfit.

But, though Don Joaquin had reached the point of intending the marriage, he saw no occasion for much love-making, and none for Mariquita's falling in love with the young man's handsome face and fine figure. Her business was to learn that her father approved the young man as a suitor, and to recognize that that approval stamped him as suitable. That Mariquita would not suddenly learn this lesson, Sarella had partly convinced him; but he did not think there would now be any suddenness in the matter. He would have spoken with authoritative plainness to her now, without further delay; but there was a difficulty—Gore had not spoken to him.

Don Joaquin thought it was about time he did so.

"You think," he remarked when they were alone together over the fire, "that you shall buy Blaine's?"

Now Gore would certainly not buy a range so near Don Joaquin's if he should fail to secure a mistress for it in Don Joaquin's daughter. And he was by no means inclined to take success with her for granted. He was beginning to hope that there was a chance of success—that was all.

"It is worth the money," he answered; "and I have the money. But I have not absolutely decided to settle down to this way of life at all."

"I thought you had."

"Well, no. It must depend on what does not depend upon myself."

Don Joaquin found this enigmatical, which Gore might or might not have intended that he should. Though wholly uncertain how Mariquita might regard him when she came to understand that he wished for more than friendship, he was by this time quite aware that her father approved; and he was particularly anxious that she should not be "bothered."

Don Joaquin diplomatically hinted that Blaine might close with some other offer.

"There is no other offer. He told me so quite straightforwardly. I have the refusal. If he does get another offer, and I have not decided, he is of course quite free to accept it. He does not want to hurry me; I expect he knows that if I did buy, he would get a better price from me than from anyone else."

Gore might very reasonably be tired after his immensely long ride, and when he went off to bed Don Joaquin could not feel aggrieved. But he was hardly pleased by the idea that the young man intended to manage his own affairs without discussion of them, and to keep his own counsel.