IN a little summer-house at the edge of the rose garden of La Siesta, Tia Teresa was seated all alone. She was awaiting the coming of Mr. Robles to a rendezvous which he had arranged by a confidential message sent on the previous evening. It wanted some time yet of the appointed hour, but in her state of deep emotion and repressed excitement she had gladly sought the solitude of this secluded corner. Deep in thought, her mind was divided between the faraway past and the near-impending future.

Each recurring year this day to her had always been a sad and tragic anniversary. In the early hours of the morning she had been to the old Mexican cemetery on the hillside, and had bedecked with flowers the grave marked by the marble cross bearing the single word “Hermana,” also the graves close by of the parents of Don Manuel and Rosetta, the children she had nursed and tended and fondled from infancy to early manhood and womanhood, through twenty years of unalloyed happiness until the gringo had come, the ancestral acres had been filched away, and dishonor and death been brought to the slumbrously peaceful home.

And from that slumbrous peace what a sudden and terrible change! On this day thirty years ago poor little Rosetta had been found done to death beneath the precipice at Comanche Point. No less done to death by the shock and shame of the pitiful story thus revealed, the aged parents of the beautiful young girl were, within a few days, sleeping their long last sleep by her side in the churchyard on the hill. A whole family blighted and withered as by the blast of some death-laden sirocco.

Then had followed the years of terror during which Don Manuel, the White Wolf, the dreaded outlaw, had wreaked his vengeance on the whole race of gringos. She had never seen him all through that time, although at intervals money had reached her by Pierre Luzon’s trusted hand, enabling her to maintain herself in the little Mexican village near the old fort of Tejon. At last had come the fight when the band of outlaws had been finally dispersed, Pierre Luzon wounded and dragged away to serve the rest of his days in prison, Don Manuel vanished like a wraith in the mist, gone where no man could tell.

But through the years that succeeded, Tia Teresa had known that he lived—had known in her heart of hearts that he would live until the vendetta he had sworn against Ben Thurston would be accomplished. The remittances that arrived from time to time, first from Spain, then from England, needed no signature to show that they were from her young master of former years and that he still held his faithful old nurse in affectionate remembrance. And at last had come the crowning surprise of all.

Tia Teresa had been bidden to come to Los Angeles by a letter which bore a strange signature, but the handwriting of which she had immediately recognized. And there, in a fine home beneath the foothills that skirt the city to the north, she had found Don Manuel again, much older in manner than by lapse of years—quiet, reserved, tinged with a sadness of which she knew the cause, but happy withal, for he was married to a beautiful English girl and had a little baby daughter. And as nurse to this child Tia Teresa, to her great joy, was promptly installed.

Thus again she had become the trusted servant in Don Manuel’s home, the only one around him possessing his full confidence and knowing the secret story of his past. For, amid these changed surroundings, his name was Ricardo Robles, his standing that of a Spaniard or Mexican of wealth, of scholarly tastes, and devoted to the seclusion of his home with its spacious surrounding gardens.

Their next door neighbors were an English family named Darlington, Mrs. Darlington and Mrs. Robles having been life-long friends. And here, too, was another tiny child in the home, likewise a daughter.

Seated in the summer-house, Tia Teresa was going over in her mind the whole chain of happenings—the new era that had dawned and had brought the hope of restored and abiding happiness for Don Manuel. But it had been fated not so to be. Within a year his young wife had died, his child was motherless, he himself, if not alone in the world, was broken-hearted. For a spell he had fits of brooding, then all of a sudden he had sold the home that could only henceforth be for him a place of saddening memories.

His daughter Merle, taking her English mother’s maiden name of Farnsworth, was transferred to the loving care of Mrs. Darlington. Thus had it come about that Grace Darlington and Merle Farnsworth had been brought up as sisters, with Tia Teresa their nurse, and in later years their devoted attendant.

Ricardo Robles had resolved to travel, but Tia Teresa had quickly divined that the vendetta was again in his heart. For no other reason could he have decided on masking the paternity of his infant daughter by giving her the maternal name. And from Tia Teresa Don Manuel had no secret to conceal. “Yes.” He had sworn he would hunt Ben Thurston through Europe, and it was to protect the future life of his child from any association with future consequences of the blood feud that he had handed her over to his friends under their solemn promise that, as Merle grew up, she should never know anything more than that both her parents had died.

So once again Don Manuel had gone his way and disappeared. Some years later the Darlington home had been transferred to England, where Mr. Darlington had fallen heir to some ancestral estates. Again, after a lapse of years, another change had occurred—Mr. Darlington dying, and Mrs. Darlington being left a widow in the big, now gloomy, English country-house, with Grace and Merle approaching young womanhood, and all of them, Tia Teresa included, longing again for the sunshine of California.

Intermittently during those years in England, Ricardo Robles had visited his friends, but the secret about his real relationship to Merle had always been preserved. Both daughters in the home had been brought up alike to regard him simply as a dear and valued friend, whose comings brought much happiness to their lives in the shape of gifts which preserved fond memories during his prolonged spells of absence.

And while the little family was still plunged in deep sorrow for the death of Mr. Darlington, Mr. Robles had reappeared as the messenger of great joy. For he brought the news that the beautiful rancho of La Siesta, lying in mid-California, among the foothills of the Tejon Valley, had been purchased for the express purpose that the widow and children should make it their future place of abode. In this way had come about the return to the land which each and all already loved best and regarded as truly “home.”

“Five years ago!” murmured Tia Teresa pensively. And they had been all so happy here, the young girls growing up with every accomplishment money and the best governesses could bestow, Don Manuel not far away watching the progress and developing beauty of his daughter, always hovering near for acts of helpful kindness.

Five years of placid enjoyment, of unbroken tranquility, till all of a sudden the old enemy had returned and all the rankling wounds of the old vendetta had been reopened!

In the Spanish soul of Tia Teresa there was bitter hate still, and fierce joy even now that the hour of retribution was approaching—that at last after all those years her little Rosetta would be avenged. Yet time had had some mellowing influences, for in her musings now she experienced a vague sense of uneasiness for possible consequences that in former times had never for a moment been tolerated. The true spirit of the vendetta had always been in her very blood—strike when you can, without thought of what may happen next.

But now she was thinking of coming happenings—of sorrow perhaps for Merle, of the undoubted danger for Don Manuel himself.

And while thus she conned the chances, her head bent in deep meditation, her eyes half closed, Ricardo Robles, approaching with noiseless step, stood by her side and laid an affectionate hand upon her shoulder.

“I have come, Tia Teresa,” he said simply, as he sat down at the edge of the little rustic table.