MARIQUITA 
 
 jsv 
 
 JOHN AYSCOUGH 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2016 
 
 https://archive.org/details/mariquitaOOaysc 
 

MARIQUITA 
 
i c £1 GhG'f 4 -^3 ^ ) S 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 By 
 
 JOHN AYSCOUGH , p^3uA , 
 
 LONDON : SANDS & CO., 
 
 15 KING STREET, COVENT GARDENS, W.C. 
 AND EDINBURGH 
 
 1922 
 
X 3 
 M 34- 
 
 14 $-^ 
 
 
Senorita ^ttariquita (Butlerrez 
 
 Senorita, 
 
 It is, indeed, kind of you to condone, by 
 your acceptance of the dedication of this small 
 book, the theft of your name, perpetrated 
 without your knowledge, in its title. And in 
 thanking you for that acceptance I seize 
 another opportunity of apologizing for that 
 theft. 
 
 I need not tell you that in drawing 
 Mariquita’s portrait I have not been guilty of 
 the further liberty of attempting your own, 
 since we have never met, except on paper, and 
 you belong to that numerous party of my 
 friends known to me only by welcome and 
 kind letters. But I hope there may be a 
 nearer likelihood of my meeting you than 
 there now can be of my seeing your namesake. 
 
 That you and some others may like her I 
 earnestly trust : if not it must be the fault of 
 my portrait, drawn perhaps with less skill than 
 respectful affection. 
 
 John Ayscough. 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 A whole state, as big as England and Wales, 
 and then half as big again, tilting smoothly 
 upward towards, but never reaching, the 
 Great Divide : the tilt so gradual that miles 
 of land seem level; a vast sun-swept, breeze- 
 swept upland always high above the level of 
 the far, far off sea, here in the western skirts 
 of the state a mile above it. Its sky-scape 
 always equal to its landscape, and dominant — 
 as the sky can never be imagined in shut lands 
 of close valleys, where trees are forever at war 
 with the air and with the light. 
 
 Here light and life seeming twin and in- 
 separable : and the wind itself but the 
 
 breathing of the light. What is called, by the 
 foolish, a featureless country, that is with 
 huge, fine features, not to be sought for but 
 insistent, regnant, everywhere : space, 
 
 tangible and palpable, height inevitably 
 
8 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 perceptible and recognizable in all the un- 
 violated light, in the winds’ smash, and the 
 sun’s, in the dancing sense of freedom : yet 
 that dancing not frivolous, but gladly solemn. 
 
 As to little features they are slurred (to the 
 slight glance) in the vast unity : but look for 
 them, and they are myriad. The river-banks 
 hold them, between prairie-lip and water. 
 The prairie- waves hold them. Life is 
 innumerably present, though to the hasty 
 sight it seems primarily and distinctly absent. 
 There are myriads of God’s little live 
 preachers, doing each, from untold ages to 
 untold ages, the unnoted things set them by 
 Him to do, as their big brothers the sun and 
 the wind, the rain and the soil do. 
 
 Of the greater beasts fewer but plenty — 
 fox, and timber- wolf, and coyote, and still 
 to-day an antelope here and there. 
 
 Of men few. Their dwellings parted by 
 wide distances. Their voices scarce heard 
 where no dwelling is at hand. But the 
 dwellings, being solitary and rare, singularly 
 home-stamped. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 Mariquita came out from the home-stead, 
 where there was nobody, and stood at its 
 verge (where the prairie began abruptly) 
 where there was nobody. She was twenty 
 years old and had lived five of them here on 
 the prairie, since her mother died, and she 
 had come home to be her father’s daughter 
 and house-keeper, and all the servant he had. 
 She was hardly taller now, and more slim. 
 Her father did not know she was beautiful — 
 at first he had been too much engaged in 
 remembering her mother who had been very 
 blonde and fair, not at all like her. Her own 
 skin was dark ; and her rich hair was dark ; her 
 grave, soft, deep eyes were dark, though 
 hazel-dark, not black-dark : whereas her 
 
 mother’s hair had been sunny-golden, and 
 her eyes bright (rather shallow) blue, and her 
 skin all white and rose. 
 
 Her mother had taught school, up in 
 Cheyenne, in Wyoming, and had been of a 
 
10 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 New England family of Puritans. Her 
 father’s people had come, long ago, from 
 Spain, and he himself had been born near the 
 desert in New Mexico : his mother may have 
 been Indian — but a Catholic, anyway. 
 
 So, no doubt, was Joaquin : though he had 
 little occasion to remember it. It was over 
 fifty miles to the nearest church and he had 
 not heard Mass for years. He had married 
 his Protestant wdfe without any dispensation, 
 and a judge had married them. 
 
 Nevertheless when the child came he had 
 made the mother understand she must be of 
 his church, and had baptized her himself. 
 When Mariquita was ten years old he sent her 
 to the Loretto nuns, out on the heights be- 
 yond Denver, where she had been confirmed, 
 and made her first Communion, and many 
 subsequent Communions. 
 
 For five years now she had had to “ hear 
 Mass her own way.” That is to say she went 
 out upon the prairie, and, in the shade of a 
 tree-clump, took her lonely place, crossed 
 herself at the threshold of the shadow, and 
 genuflected towards where she believed her 
 old school was, with its chapel, and its 
 Tabernacle. Then, out of her book she 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 11 
 
 followed the Ordinary of the Mass, projecting 
 herself in mind and fancy into that wor- 
 shipping company, picturing priest and nuns 
 and school-fellows. At the Sanctus she rang 
 a sheep-bell, and deepened all her Intention. 
 At the Elevation she rang it again, in double 
 triplet, though she could elevate only her own 
 solitary soul. At first she had easily pictured 
 all her school-fellows in their remembered 
 places — they were all grown up and gone 
 away home now. The old priest she had 
 known was dead, as the nuns had sent her 
 word, and she had to picture a priest, un- 
 known, featureless, instead of him. The 
 nuns’ faces had somewhat dimmed in dis- 
 tinctness too ; but she could picture the large 
 group still. 
 
 At the Communion she always made a 
 Spiritual Communion of her own — that was 
 why she always “ heard her Mass ” early, so 
 as to be fasting. 
 
 Once or twice, at long intervals, she had 
 been followed by one of the cow-boys : but 
 the first one had seen her face as she knelt, 
 and gone away, noiselessly, with a shy, red, 
 reverence. Her father had seen the second 
 making obliquely towards her tree-clump, had 
 
12 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 over-taken him and enquired grimly if he 
 would like a leathering. “When Mariquita’s 
 at church,” said Jose, “ let her be. She’s 
 for none of us then.” 
 
 And they let her be : and her tree-clump 
 became known as Mariquita’s Church by all 
 the cow-boys. 
 
 One by one they fell in love with her (her 
 father grimly conscious, but unremarking) 
 and one by one they found nothing come of 
 it. Whether he would have objected had 
 anything come of it he did not say, though 
 several had tried to guess. 
 
 To her he never spoke of it, any more than 
 to them : he hardly spoke to her of anything 
 except the work — which she did carefully, as 
 if carelessly. If she had neglected it, or done 
 it badly, he would have rebuked her : that, he 
 considered, was parental duty : as she needed 
 no rebuke he said nothing ; his ideas of 
 paternal duty were bounded by paternal 
 correction and a certain cool watchfulness. 
 His watchfulness was not intrusive : he left 
 her chiefly to herself, perceiving her to require 
 no guidance. In all her life he never had 
 occasion to complain that anything she did 
 was “ out of place ” — his notion of the 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 18 
 
 severest expression of disapproval a father 
 could be called upon to utter. 
 
 It was, in his opinion, to be taken for 
 granted that a parent was entitled to the 
 affection of his child, and that the child was 
 entitled to the affection of her father. He 
 neither displayed his affection nor wished 
 Mariquita to display hers. Nor was there in 
 him any sensible feeling of love for the girl. 
 Her mother he had loved, and it was a relief 
 to him that his daughter was wholly unlike 
 her. It would have vexed him had there been 
 any challenging likeness — would have resented 
 it as a tacit claim, like a rivalry. 
 
 Joaquin was lonelier than Mariquita. He 
 did not like being called “ Don Joaquin he 
 preferred being known by his surname, as 
 “ Mr. Xeres.” One of the cow-boys, a very 
 ignorant lad from the East, had supposed 
 “ Wah-Keen ” to be a Chinese name, and 
 confided his idea to the others. Don Joaquin 
 had overheard their laughter and had been 
 enraged by its cause when he learned it. 
 
 He had not married till he was a little over 
 thirty, being already well off by then, and he 
 was therefore now past fifty — on this after- 
 noon when Mariquita came out and stood all 
 
14 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 alone where the home-stead as it were 
 rejoined the prairie. At first her long gaze, 
 used to the great distances, was turned west- 
 ward (and south a little) towards where, 
 miles upon miles out of sight, lay the Mile 
 High City, and Loretto, and the Convent, 
 and all that made her one stock of memories. 
 
 The prairie was as empty to such a gaze as 
 so much ocean. 
 
 But the sun-stare dazzled her, and she 
 turned eastward : half a mile from her, that 
 way, lay the river, showing nothing at this 
 distance : its water, not filling at this season a 
 fifth of the space between banks was out of 
 sight : the low scrub within its banks was out 
 of sight. Even its lips, of precisely even level 
 on either side, were not discernible. But 
 where she knew the further lip was, she saw 
 two riders, a man and a woman. A moment 
 after she caught sight of them they disap- 
 peared — had ridden down into the river-bed. 
 The trail had guided them, and they could 
 miss neither the way nor the ford. 
 
 Nevertheless she walked towards where 
 they were— though her father might possibly 
 have thought her doing so out of place. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 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 horse-back. 
 
 His companion was much aware of his 
 being handsome, but Mariquita did not think 
 of that. She, however, liked him immedi- 
 ately — 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,” enquired the blonde lady— 
 
16 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 pointing, though inaccurately, as if to indicate 
 Mariquita’s home, “ where Mr. Xeres lives, 
 please ? ’ * 
 
 She pronounced the x like the x’s in 
 Arterxerxes. 
 
 “ 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 admir- 
 able readiness) an expression of pathos. 
 
 “ How very sad ! I do apologise,” 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, “ you would not have said anything to 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 17 
 
 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 com- 
 pletely, not noisely, on my part, nor roughly, 
 but irrevocably. Hence my resolve to turn to 
 
 B 
 
18 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 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 recom- 
 mended 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 cow-boys, 
 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 ” 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Don Joaquin expressed no surprise at Mr. 
 Gore’s arrival, and no rapture at that of Miss 
 Jackson. But he appeared to take it for 
 granted both would remain — as they did. 
 
 He saw more of the young man than of the 
 young woman which seemed to Mariquita to 
 account for his preferring the latter. She had 
 to see more of the lady. Miss Jackson was 
 undeniably pretty, and instantly recognized 
 as such by the cow-boys : but she “ kept her 
 distance ” and largely ignored their presence 
 — a fact not unobserved by Don Joaquin, who 
 inwardly commended her prudence. Of Mr. 
 Gore she took more notice, as was natural, 
 owing to their previous acquaintance. She 
 spoke of him, however, to her host, as a lad, 
 and hinted that at her age, lads were tedious, 
 while frequent in allusion to a certain Eastern 
 friend of hers (Mr. Bluck, a man of large 
 means and great capacity) whose married 
 daughter was her closest acquaintance. 
 
20 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 “ Carolina was older than me at school,” 
 she would admit, “ but she was more to my 
 taste than those of my own age. Maturity 
 wins me. Youth is so raw !” 
 
 “ What you call underdone,” suggested 
 Don Joaquin, who had talked English for 
 forty years, and translated it still, in his mind 
 into Spanish. 
 
 “ Just that,” Sarah agreed, “ You grasp 
 me.” 
 
 He didn’t then, though he would sooner or 
 later, thought the cow-boys. 
 
 Miss Jackson, then, ignored the cow-boys, 
 and gave all the time she could spare from 
 herself to Mariquita. When not with 
 Mariquita she was sewing, being an indefatig- 
 able dress-maker. She called it her “studies.” 
 
 “ It is essential (out here in the wilderness) 
 that I should not neglect my studies, and run 
 to seed.” She would say as she smilingly 
 retreated into her bedroom, where there were 
 no books. 
 
 Mariquita would not have been sorry had 
 she “ studied ” more. Sarah did not fit into 
 her old habits of life, and when they were 
 together Mariquita felt lonelier than she had 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 21 
 
 ever done before. Indoors she did not find 
 the young woman so incongruous — but when 
 they were out on the prairie together the 
 elder girl seemed somehow altogether im- 
 possible to reconcile with it. 
 
 “ One might sketch,” Miss Jackson would 
 observe. “ One ought to keep up one’s 
 sketching : I feel it to be a duty — don’t 
 you?” 
 
 “ No. I can’t sketch. It can’t be a duty 
 in my case.” 
 
 “ Ah, but in mine ! I know I ought. But 
 there’s no feature.” And she slowly waved 
 her parasol round the horizon as though 
 defying a “ feature ” to supervene from any 
 point of the compass. 
 
 Though she despised her present neighbour- 
 hood Sarah never hinted at any intention of 
 leaving it : and it became apparent that her 
 host would not have liked her to go away. 
 That her presence was a great thing for 
 Mariquita it suited him to assume, but he saw 
 no necessity for discussing the matter, nor 
 ascertaining what might in fact be his 
 daughter’s opinion. 
 
 “ I think,” he said instead, “ It will be 
 better we call your cousin Sarella. It is her 
 
22 MARIQTJITA 
 
 name Sarah and Ella. Sarella sounds more 
 fitting.” 
 
 So he and Mariquita thenceforth called her 
 Sarella. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 Don Joaquin never thought much of Robert 
 Gore; he failed, from the first, to “ take to 
 him.” It had not delighted him that 
 “ Sarella ” should arrive under his escort, 
 though how she could have made her way up 
 from Maxwell without him he did not trouble 
 to discuss with himself. At first he had 
 thought it at most inevitable that the young 
 man should make those services of his a claim 
 to special intimacy with the lady to whom he 
 had accidentally been useful. As it became 
 apparent that Gore made no such claim, and 
 was not peculiarly inclined to intimacy with 
 his late fellow-traveller, Don Joaquin was 
 half disposed to take umbrage, as though the 
 young man were in a manner slighting Miss 
 Jackson — his own wife’s niece. 
 
 As there were only two women about the 
 place, indifference to one of them (and that 
 one, in Don Joaquin’s opinion, by far the 
 
24 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 more attractive) might be accounted for by 
 some special inclination towards the other. 
 Was Gore equally indifferent to Mariquita? 
 
 Now, at present, Mariquita’s father was not 
 ready to approve any advances from the 
 stranger in that direction. He did not feel he 
 knew enough about him. That he was 
 sufficiently well off he thought probable : but 
 in that matter he must have certainty. And 
 besides, he thought Gore was sure to be a 
 Protestant. Now he had married a Protestant 
 himself : and that his wife had been taken 
 from him in her youth had been, he had 
 silently decided, Heaven’s retribution. Be- 
 sides, a girl was different. A man might do 
 things she might not. He had consulted his 
 own will and pleasure only : but Mariquita 
 was not, therefore free to consult hers. A 
 Catholic girl should give herself only to a 
 Catholic man. 
 
 That Mariquita and Gore saw little of each 
 other he was pretty sure : but it was not 
 possible they should see nothing. And it 
 soon became his opinion that, without much 
 personal intercourse, they were interested in 
 each other. 
 
 Mariquita listened (without often looking 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 25 
 
 at him) when Gore talked, in a manner he had 
 never yet observed in her. Gore’s extreme 
 deference towards the girl, his singular and 
 almost aloof courtesy was, the old man con- 
 ceived, not only breeding and good manners, 
 but the sign of some special way in which she 
 had impressed him ; as if he had, at sight, 
 perceived in her something unrevealed to her 
 father himself. In this, as in most things, 
 Don Joaquin was correct in his surmise. He 
 was shrewd in surmise to the point almost of 
 cleverness, though by no means an infallible 
 judge of character. It did not, however, occur 
 to him that the young stranger was right in 
 this fancied perception, that in Mariquita 
 there was something higher and finer than 
 anything divined by her father, who had 
 never gone beyond admitting that, so far, he 
 had perceived in her nothing out of place. 
 
 If anything out of place should now 
 appear he would speak : meanwhile he 
 
 remained, as his habit was, silent and watch- 
 ful : not rendered more appreciative of his 
 daughter by the stranger’s appreciation, and 
 not inclined by that appreciation more 
 favourably to the stranger himself. 
 
 That Gore was not warmly welcomed by 
 
26 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 the cow-boys neither surprised nor troubled 
 him. There were no quarrels and that was 
 enough. He did not expect them to be 
 delighted by the advent of a foreigner in a 
 position not identical with their own. What 
 they did for pay he paid for being taught to 
 do — that was the theory, though in fact Gore 
 did not seem to need much teaching. Some, 
 of course, he did need : prairie-lore he could 
 not know, however practised he might be as 
 a mere horse-man. Don Joaquin was chiefly 
 a horse-raiser and dealer, though he dealt also 
 in cattle and even in sheep. By this time he 
 had the repute of being wealthy. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 It was true that the actual intercourse 
 between Mariquita and her father’s appren- 
 tice or pupil was much less frequent or close 
 than might be imagined by anyone strange to 
 the way of life of which they formed two 
 units. 
 
 At meals they sat at the same table, but 
 during the greater part of every day he was 
 out upon the range, and she at home, within 
 the homestead, or near it. Yet it was also 
 true that between them there was something 
 not existing between either and any other 
 person : a friendship mostly silent, an interest 
 not the less real or strong because of the 
 silence. To Gore, Mariquita was a study of 
 profounder interest than any book he knew. 
 To make a counter-study of him would have 
 been alien from her nature and character : 
 but his presence, which she did not ponder, 
 or consider, as he did hers, brought something 
 
28 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 into her life. Perhaps it chiefly made her less 
 lonely by revealing to her how lonely she had 
 been. Of his beauty she never thought — 
 never till the end. Of hers he thought much 
 less as he became more and more absorbed in 
 herself — though its fineness was always more 
 and more clearly perceived by him. 
 
 On that first afternoon, when Gore had first 
 seen her, it had instantly struck him as 
 possessing a quality of rarity, elusive and never 
 to be defined. Miss Jackson’s almost 
 gorgeous prettiness, her brilliant colouring, 
 her attractive shapeliness, had been hopelessly 
 and finally vulgarized by the contrast — as the 
 two young women stood on the level-lip of the 
 river-course in the unsparing, unflattering 
 light. 
 
 That Miss Jackson promptly decided that 
 Mariquita was stupid Gore had seen plainly : 
 and he had not had the consolation of knowing 
 that she was stupid herself. She was, he knew, 
 wise enough in her generation, and by no 
 means vacant of will or purpose ; but she 
 was, he saw, stupid in thinking her young 
 hostess so. Slow, in some senses, Mariquita 
 might be — not swift of impression, though 
 tenacious of impression received, nor willing 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 29 
 
 to be quick in jumping to shrewd (un- 
 flattering) conclusion, yet likely to stick hard 
 to an even harsh conclusion once formed. 
 
 These, however, were slight matters. What 
 was no slight matter was the sense Mariquita 
 gave him of nobility : her simplicity itself 
 noble, her complete acquiescence in her own 
 complete: ignorance of experience — her innate, 
 unargued conviction of the little consequence 
 of much, often highly desired, experience. 
 
 Of the world she knew nothing, socially, 
 geographically even. Of women her know- 
 ledge was (as he soon discovered) a mere 
 memory, a memory of a group of nuns — for 
 her other companions at the Convent had been 
 children. Of men she knew only her father 
 and his cow-boys. And no one, he perceived, 
 knew her. 
 
 But Gore did not believe her mind vacant. 
 That rare quality could not have been in her 
 beauty if it had been empty. Yet — there was 
 something greater than her mind behind her 
 face. The shape of that perception had 
 entered instantly into his own mind : and the 
 perception grew and deepened daily, with 
 every time he was in her presence, with every 
 recollection of her in absence. 
 
30 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 Her mind might be a garden unsown. But 
 behind her face was the light of a lamp not 
 waiting to be lit, but already lighted, (he 
 surmised) at the first coming of conscious 
 existence, and burning steadily ever since. 
 Whose hand had lighted it he did not know 
 yet, though he knew that the lamp, shining 
 behind her face, her mere beauty, was her 
 soul. Her father was not mistaken in his 
 notion that the young man regarded the girl 
 to whom he addressed so little of direct speech 
 with a veneration that disconcerted Don 
 Joaquin and was condemned by him as out of 
 place. Not that he, of course, found fault 
 with respect: absence of that he would grimly 
 have resented : but a culte, like Gore’s, a 
 reverence literally devout, seemed to the old 
 half-Indian Latin, high falutin, unreal : and 
 Don Joaquin abhorred unrealities. 
 
 Probably the young man condemned the 
 old man as hide-bound in obtuseness of per- 
 ception in reference to his daughter. As a 
 jewel of gold in a swine’s snout she may well 
 have seemed to him. If so, some inkling of the 
 fact would surely penetrate the old horse- 
 raiser’s inner, taciturn, but acutely watchful 
 consciousness — his hide was by no means too 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 31 
 
 thick for that. And, if so again, that percep- 
 tion would not enhance his appreciation of 
 the critic. 
 
 Elderly fathers are not universally more 
 flattered by an exalted valuation of their 
 daughters than by an admiring estimation of 
 themselves. 
 
 To himself, indeed, Gore was perfectly res- 
 pectful ; and he had to admit that the 
 stranger learned his work well and did it well 
 — better than the cow-boys whom Don 
 Joaquin was not given to indulge in neglect or 
 slackness. 
 
 He had a notion that the cow-boys con- 
 sidered Gore too respectable — as to which 
 their master held his judgment in suspense. 
 In a possible son-in-law respectability, unless 
 quite suspiciously excessive, would not be 
 much “ out of place not that Don Joaquin 
 admitted more than the bare possibility, till 
 he had fuller certainty as to the stranger’s 
 circumstances and antecedents, what he called 
 his “ conditions.” Given satisfactory con- 
 ditions Mariquita’s father began to be 
 conscious that Gore as a possible son-in-law 
 might simplify a certain course of his own. 
 
 For Sarella continued steadily to commend 
 
32 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 herself to his ideas. He held her to be 
 beautiful in the extreme, and her prudence he 
 secretly acclaimed as admirable. That she 
 was penniless he was quite aware, and he had 
 a constant, sincere affection for money : but, 
 unless penniless, such a lovely creature could 
 hardly have been found on the prairie, or be 
 expected to remain there : an elderly rich 
 husband, he considered, would have much 
 more hold on a young and lovely wife, if she 
 were penniless. 
 
 That the young woman had expensive tastes 
 he did not suppose, and he had great and 
 not ungrounded confidence in his own power 
 of repression of any taste not to his mind, 
 should any supervene. 
 
 Don Joaquin had two reasons for surveying 
 with conditional approval the idea of marrying 
 Sarella — when he should have made up his 
 mind, which he had not yet done. One was 
 to please himself : the other was in order that 
 he might have a son. Mariquita’s sex had 
 always been against her. Before her arrival 
 he had decided that his child must be a boy, 
 and her being a girl was out of place. He 
 disliked making money for some other man’s 
 wife. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Jack did not like Sarella, and so it was fortun- 
 ate for that young person that Jack’s opinion 
 was of no sort of consequence. He had been 
 longer on the range than anyone there except 
 Don Joaquin, and he did much that would, if 
 he had been a different sort of man, have en- 
 titled him to consider himself foreman. But 
 he received smaller wages than anyone and 
 never dreamt of being foreman. He was 
 believed never to have had any other name 
 but Jack, and was known to have never had 
 but one suit of clothes : and his face and hands 
 were much shabbier than his clothes, owing 
 to a calendar of personal accidents. “ That 
 happened,” he would say, “ in the year the 
 red bull horned my eye out,” or “ I mind — 
 ’twas in the Jenoorey that my leg got 
 smashed thro’ Black Peter rollin’ on me. . .” 
 He had been struck in the jaw by a splinter 
 from a tree that had itself been struck by 
 c 
 
34 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 lightning, and the scar he called his “ June 
 mark.” A missing finger of his right hand 
 he called his Xmas mark ; because it was on 
 Christmas Day that the gun burst which shot 
 it off. These, and many other scars and 
 blemishes, would have marred the beauty of 
 an Antinoiis, and Jack had always been ugly. 
 
 But, shabby as he was, he was marvellously 
 clean, and Mariquita was very fond of him. 
 His crooked body held a straight heart, loyal 
 and kind : and a child’s mind could not be 
 cleaner. No human being suspected that 
 Jack hated his master, whom he served faith- 
 fully and with stingily rewarded toil : and he 
 hated him not because he was stingy to him- 
 self, but because Jack adored Mariquita, and 
 accused her father of indifference to her. He 
 was angry with him for leaving her alone to 
 do all the work, and angry because nothing 
 was ever done for her, and no thought taken 
 of her. 
 
 When Sarella and Gore came Jack hoped 
 that the young man would marry Mariquita 
 and take her away — though he would be 
 left desolate. Thus Mariquita would be 
 happy — and her father be punished : for 
 
 Jack clearly perceived that Don Joaquin did 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 35 
 
 not care for Gore, and he did not perceive 
 that Mariquita’s departure might be con- 
 venient to her father. But Jack could not 
 see that Gore himself did much to carry out 
 that marriage scheme. That the young man 
 set a far higher value on Mariquita than her 
 father had ever done Jack did promptly 
 understand : but he could perceive no 
 
 advances and watched him with impatience. 
 
 As for Sarella Jack was jealous of her 
 importance : jealous that the old man made 
 more of his wife’s niece than of his own 
 daughter : jealous that she had much less to 
 do, and specially jealous that she had much 
 smarter clothes. Jack could not see Sarella’s 
 beauty : had he possessed a looking-glass it 
 might have been supposed to have dislocated 
 his eye for beauty, but he possessed none — 
 and he thought Mariquita as beautiful as the 
 dawn on the prairie. 
 
 To do her justice Sarella was civil to the 
 battered old fellow, but he didn’t want her 
 civility, and was ungrateful for it. Yet her 
 civility was to prove useful. Jack lived in a 
 shed at the end of the stables, where he ate 
 and slept, and mended his clothes sitting up 
 in bed, and wearing (then only) a large pair 
 
36 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 of spectacles, though half a pair would have 
 been enough. He cooked his own food, 
 though Mariquita would have cooked it for 
 him if he would have let her. 
 
 Sarella loved good eating, and on her 
 coming it irritated her to see so much 
 excellent food “made so little of.” Presently 
 she gave specimens of her own superior 
 science, and Don Joaquin approved, as did 
 the cow-boys. 
 
 “ Jack,” she said to him one day, “ do you 
 ever eat anything but stew from year’s end to 
 year’s end?” 
 
 “ I eats bread too, and likewise corn 
 porridge,” Jack replied coldly. 
 
 “ I could tell you how to make more of 
 your meat — I should think you’d sicken of 
 stew everlastingly.” 
 
 “ There’s worse than stew,” he suggested. 
 
 “ I don’t know what’s worse then,” the 
 young lady retorted, wrinkling her very 
 pretty nose. 
 
 “ None. That’s worse,” said Jack, 
 triumphantly. 
 
 “ It seems to me,” Sarella observed 
 thoughtfully, “as if you’re growing a bit 
 oldish to do for yourself, and have no one to 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 87 
 
 do anything for you. An elderly man wants 
 a woman to keep him comfortable.” 
 
 Jack snorted, but Sarella, undefeated, pro- 
 ceeded to put the case of his being ill. Who 
 would nurse him? 
 
 “ 111! I’ve too much to do for sech idle- 
 ness. The Boss’d stare if I laid out to get 
 
 ill.” 
 
 “ Illness,” Sarella remarked piously, 
 “ comes from Above, and may come 
 any day. Haven’t you anyone belonging to 
 you, Jack? No sister, no niece: you never 
 were married, I suppose, so I don’t mention 
 a daughter.” 
 
 “ I was married, though,” Jack explained, 
 much delighted, “ and had a daughter too.” 
 
 “You quite surprise me!” cried Sarella, 
 “ quite!” 
 
 She didn’t marry me for my looks, my wife 
 didn’t,” chuckled Jack. “Nor yet for my 
 money.” 
 
 “ Out of esteem?” suggested Sarella. 
 
 “ Can’t say, I’m sure. I never heerd her 
 mention it. Anyway it didn’t last ” 
 
 “ The esteem?” 
 
 “No. The firm. She died — when Ginger 
 
88 MARIQUITA 
 
 was born. Since which I have remained a 
 bachelord.” 
 
 “ By Ginger you mean your daughter?” 
 
 “ That’s what they called her. Her aunt 
 took her : and she took the small-pox. But 
 she didn’t die of it. She’s alive now.” 
 
 “ Married, I daresay?” 
 
 “No. Single. She’s as like me as you’re 
 not,” Jack explained summarily. 
 
 Sarella laughed. 
 
 “ A good girl, though, I’ll be bound,” she 
 hinted amiably. 
 
 “ She’s never mentioned the contrary — in 
 her letters.” 
 
 “ Oh, she writes. I’m glad she writes.” 
 
 “ Thank you, Miss Sarella. She writes 
 most Christmasses. And she wrote lately tho’ 
 it’s not Christmas.” 
 
 “ Not ill, I hope?” 
 
 “111! She’s an industrious girl with plenty 
 o’ sense . . . but her Aunt’s dead, and 
 
 she thinks o’ taking a place in a boarding- 
 house.” 
 
 “ Jack,” said Sarella after a brief but 
 pregnant pause of consideration, “ bring her 
 up here.” 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 39 
 
 Jack regarded her with a stare of undis- 
 guised amazement. 
 
 “ Why not?” Sarella persisted. “ It 
 would be better for you.” 
 
 “ What’s that to do with it?” 
 
 “ And better for Miss Mariquita. It’s too 
 much for Miss Mariquita — all the work she 
 has to do.” 
 
 “ That’s true anyway.” 
 
 “ Of course, it’s true. Anyone can see 
 that.” (That Sarella saw it considerably 
 surprised Jack, and provided matter for some 
 close consideration subsequently.) 
 
 “ Look here, Jack,” she went on, “I’ll 
 tell you what. You go to Mr. Xeres and 
 say you’d like your daughter to come and 
 work for you . . .” 
 
 “ And he’d tell me to go and be damned.” 
 “ But you’d not go. And he wouldn’t 
 want you to go. And I’ll speak to him.” 
 Jack stared again. He hardly realized yet 
 how much steadily growing confidence in her 
 influence with “ the Boss ” Sarella felt. He 
 made no promise to speak to him : but said 
 “ he’d sleep on it.” 
 
 With that sleep came a certain ray of com- 
 prehension. Miss Sarella was not thinking 
 
40 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 entirely of him and his loneliness : nor entirely 
 of Miss Mariquita. He believed that she 
 really expected the Boss would marry her (as 
 all the cow-boys had believed for some weeks) 
 and he perceived, with some involuntary 
 admiration of her shrewdness, that she had no 
 idea of being left, if Miss Mariquita should 
 marry and go away, to do all the work as she 
 had done. Once arrived at this perception of 
 the situation Jack went ahead confident of 
 Sarella’s quietly persistent help. He had not 
 the least dread of rough language. He had 
 no sensitive dread of displeasing his master. 
 He would like to have Ginger up at the range 
 — especially as Ginger’s coming would take 
 much of the work off Miss Mariquita’s hands. 
 
 He even made Don Joaquin suspect that 
 if Ginger were not allowed to come he, Jack, 
 would go, and make a home for her down in 
 Maxwell. 
 
 It did not suit Don Joaquin to lose Jack, 
 and it suited him very well to listen to Sarella. 
 
 So Ginger came, and proved, as all the 
 cow-boys agreed, a good sort, though quite 
 as ugly as her father. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 “Mariquita,” said her father one day, “does 
 Sarella ever talk to you about religion?” 
 
 Anything like what could be called a con- 
 versation was so rare between them that the 
 girl was surprised, and it surprised her still 
 more that he should chose that particular 
 subject. 
 
 “ She asked me if we were Catholics.” 
 
 “ Of course we are Catholics. You said 
 so?” 
 
 “ I didn’t say ‘ of course ’ : but I said we 
 were. She then asked if my mother had 
 become one — on her marriage or afterwards.” 
 
 Don Joaquin heard this with evident 
 interest, and, as Mariquita thought, with 
 some satisfaction. 
 
 “ What did you say?” he enquired. 
 
 Mariquita glanced at him as if puzzled. “I 
 told her that my mother never became a 
 Catholic,” she answered. 
 
 “ That pleased her?” 
 
42 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 “ I don’t know. She did not seem pleased 
 or displeased.” 
 
 “ She did not seem glad that I had not 
 insisted that my wife should be Catholic?” 
 
 “ She may have been glad — I did not see 
 that she was.” 
 
 “ You did not think she would have been 
 angry if she had heard I had insisted that my 
 wife should be Catholic?” 
 
 “ No : that did not appear to me.” 
 
 So far as Mariquita’s information went it 
 satisfied her father. Only it was a pity Sarella 
 should know that her aunt had not adopted 
 his own religion. 
 
 Mariquita had not probed the motive of his 
 questions. Direct enough of impression she 
 was not penetrating nor astute in following 
 the hidden working of other persons’ minds. 
 
 “It is,” he remarked, “ a good thing 
 Sarella came here.” 
 
 “ Poor thing! she had no home left — it 
 was natural she should think of coming 
 to her aunt.” 
 
 “ Yes, quite natural. And good for you 
 also.” 
 
 “ I was not lonely before ” 
 
 “ But if I had died?” 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 48 
 
 Mariquita had never thought of his dying : 
 he was as strong as a tree, and she could not 
 picture the range without him. 
 
 “ I never thought of you dying. You are 
 not old, father.” 
 
 “ Old, no ! But suppose I had died all the 
 same — before Sarella came — what would you 
 have done?” 
 
 “ I never thought of it.” 
 
 “ No. That would have been out of place. 
 But you could not have lived here, one girl all 
 alone among all the men.” 
 
 “ No, of course.” 
 
 “ Now you have Sarella. It would be 
 different.” 
 
 “ Oh, yes : if she wished to go on 
 
 living here ” 
 
 “ If she went away to live somewhere else 
 you could go with her.” 
 
 Mariquita did not see that that would be 
 necessary, but she did not say so. She was 
 not aware that her father was endeavouring 
 to habituate her mind to the permanence of 
 Sarella’s connection with herself. 
 
 “ Of course,” he said casually, “ you might 
 marry — at any time.” 
 
 “ I never thought of that,” the girl 
 
44 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 answered, and he saw clearly that she never 
 had thought of it. 
 
 Gore would, he perceived, not have her for 
 the asking : might have a great deal of asking 
 to do, and might not succeed after much 
 asking. 
 
 It was not so clear to him that Gore himself 
 was as well aware of that as he was. 
 
 That she had never had any thoughts of 
 marriage pleased him, partly because he would 
 not have liked Gore to get what he wanted so 
 easily, and partly because it satisfied his 
 notion of dignity in her — his daughter. It 
 was really his own dignity in her he was 
 thinking of. 
 
 All the same, now he knew that she was 
 not thinking of marrying the handsome 
 stranger, he felt more clearly that (if Gore’s 
 “ conditions ” were suitable) the marriage 
 might suit him — Don Joaquin. 
 
 “ There are,” he observed sententiously, 
 “ only two ways for women.” 
 
 “ Two ways?” 
 
 “ Marriage is the usual way. If God had 
 wanted only nuns he would have created 
 women only. That sees itself. Whereas 
 there are women and men — so marriage is 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 45 
 
 the ordinary way for women : and if God 
 chooses there should be more married women 
 than nuns it shows He doesn’t want too 
 many nuns.” 
 
 The argument was new to Mariquita : she 
 was little used to hear any abstract discussion 
 from her father. 
 
 “You have thought of it,” she said, “ I 
 have never thought of all that.” 
 
 “ There was no necessity. It might have 
 been out of place. All the same it is true 
 what I say.” 
 
 “ But I think it is also true that to be a 
 nun is the best way for some women.” 
 
 “ Naturally. For some.” 
 
 Mariquita had no sort of desire to argue 
 with him, or anyone ; arguments were, she 
 thought, almost quarrels. 
 
 He, on his side, was again thinking of 
 Sarella, and left the nuns alone. 
 
 “ It would,” he said, “ be a good thing if 
 Sarella should become a Catholic. If she talks 
 about religion you can explain to her that 
 there can be only one that is true.” 
 
 Mariquita did not understand (though 
 everyone else did) that her father wished to 
 marry Sarella : and, of course, she could not 
 
46 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 know that he was resolved against provoking 
 further punishment by marrying a Protestant. 
 
 “ If I can,” she said, slowly, “ I will try 
 to help her to see that. She does not talk 
 much about such things. And she is much 
 
 older than I am ” 
 
 “ Oh, yes, quite very much older,” he 
 agreed earnestly, though in fact Sarella 
 appeared simply a girl to him. 
 
 “ And it would not do good for me to seem 
 interfering.” 
 
 “ But,” he agreed with some adroitness, 
 “ though a blind person were older than you 
 you would show her the way?” 
 
 Mariquita was not, at any rate, so blind as 
 to be unable to see that her father was 
 strongly desirous that Sarella should be a 
 Catholic. It had surprised her as she had no 
 recollection of his having troubled himself 
 concerning her own mother, his beloved wife, 
 not having been one. Of course she was glad, 
 thinking it meant a deeper interest in religion 
 on his own part. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Between Mariquita and her father there was 
 little in common except a partial community 
 of race ; in nature and character they were 
 entirely different. In her the Indian strain 
 had only physical expression, and that only in 
 the slim suppleness of her frame : she would 
 never grow stout as do so many Spanish 
 women. 
 
 In her father the Indian blood had effects 
 of character. He was not merely subtle 
 like a Latin, but had besides the craft and 
 cunning of an Indian. Yet the cunning 
 seemed only an intensification of the subtlety, 
 a deeper degree of the same quality and not 
 an added separate quality. In fact in him, 
 as in many with the same mixture of race, the 
 Indian strain and the Spanish were really 
 mingled, not merely joined in one individual. 
 
 Mariquita had after all only one quarter 
 Spanish, and one Indian : whereas with him 
 
48 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 it was a quarter of half and half. She had, in 
 actual blood, a whole half that was pure 
 Saxon, for her mother’s New England family 
 was of pure English descent. Yet Mariquita 
 seemed far more purely Spanish than her 
 father : he himself could trace nothing of her 
 mother in her : and in her character was 
 nothing Indian but her patience. 
 
 From her mother personally she inherited 
 nothing, but through her mother she had 
 certain characteristics that helped to make 
 her very incomprehensible to Don Joaquin, 
 though he did not know it. 
 
 Gore, who studied her with far more care 
 and interest, because to him she seemed 
 deeply worth study, did not himself 
 feel compelled to remember her triple strain 
 of race ; for to him she seemed splendidly, 
 adorably simple. He was far from falling into 
 Sarella’s shallow mistake of calling that 
 simplicity “ stupidity to him it appeared a 
 sublimation of purity, rarely noble and fine. 
 That she was book-ignorant he knew as well 
 as that she was life-ignorant : but he did not 
 think her intellectually narrow, even intellect- 
 ually fallow. Along what roads her mind 
 moved he could not, by mere study of her, 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 49 
 
 discover : yet he was sure it did not stagnate 
 
 without motion or life. 
 
 About a month after the arrival of Sarella, 
 one Saturday night at supper, that young 
 person observed that Mr. Gore’s place was 
 vacant. 
 
 Mariquita must equally have noted the fact, 
 but she had said nothing. 
 
 “ Isn’t Mr. Gore coming to his supper?” 
 Sarella asked her. 
 
 Don Joaquin thought this out of place. 
 His daughter’s silence on the subject had 
 pleased him better. 
 
 “ I don’t know,” Mariquita answered, 
 glancing towards her father. 
 
 “ No,” he said, “ he has ridden down to 
 Maxwell.” 
 
 Sometimes one or other of the cow-boys 
 would ride down to Maxwell, and re-appear 
 without question or remark. 
 
 “ I wonder he did not mention he was 
 going,” Sarella complained. 
 
 “ Of course he mentioned it,” Don 
 Joaquin said loudly. “ He would not go 
 without asking me.” 
 
 “ But to us ladies,” Sarella persisted; “ it 
 would have been better manners.” 
 
 D 
 
50 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 “ That was not at all necessary,” Said Don 
 Joaquin, “ Mariquita would not expect it.” 
 “ I would, though. It ought to have struck 
 him that one might have a communication for 
 him. I should have had commissions for 
 him.” 
 
 It was evident that Sarella had ruffled Don 
 Joaquin: and it was the first time anyone had 
 seen him annoyed by her. 
 
 Next day, after the mid-day meal, Sarella 
 followed Mariquita out of doors, and said to 
 her, yawning and laughing. 
 
 “ Don’t you miss Mr. Gore?” 
 
 Mariquita answered at once and quite 
 simply. 
 
 “ Miss him? He was never here till a 
 month ago ” 
 
 “Nor was I,” Sarella interrupted, pouting 
 prettily. “ But you’d miss me, now.” 
 
 “ Only you’re not going away.” 
 
 “ You take it for granted I shall stop 
 then?” (And Sarella looked complacent.) 
 “That I’m a fixture.” 
 
 “ I never thought of your going away,” 
 Mariquita answered, with a formula rather 
 habitual to her. “ Where would you go?” 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 51 
 
 “ I should decide on that when I decided to 
 go.” Sarella declared oracularly. But 
 Mariquita took it with irritating calmness. 
 
 “ I don’t believe you will decide to go,” 
 she said with that gravity and plainness of 
 hers that often irritated Sarella — who liked 
 badinage. “ It would be useless.” 
 
 “ Suppose,” Sarella suggested, pinching 
 the younger girl’s arm playfully. “ Suppose 
 I were to think of getting married. Shouldn’t 
 I have to go then?” 
 
 “ I never thought of that ” Mariquita 
 
 was beginning, but Sarella pinched and in- 
 terrupted her. 
 
 “ Do you ever think of anything?” she 
 complained sharply. 
 
 “ Oh yes, often, of many things.” 
 
 “ What things on earth?” (with sudden 
 inquisitive eagerness.) 
 
 “ Just my own sort of things,” Mariquita 
 answered, without saying whether “ her 
 things ” were on earth at all. Sarella pouted 
 again. 
 
 “ You’re not very confidential to a person.” 
 
 Mariquita weighed the accusation. “ Per- 
 haps,” she said quietly, “I am not much used 
 to persons. Since I came home from the 
 
52 MARIQUITA 
 
 convent there was no other girl here till you 
 came.” 
 
 “So you’re sorry I came !” 
 
 “ No, glad. I am glad you did that. It is 
 a home for you. And I am sure my father is 
 glad.” 
 
 “You think he likes my being here?” 
 And Sarella listened attentively for the 
 answer. 
 
 “ Of course. You must see it.” 
 
 “ You think he does not dislike me? He 
 was cross with me last night.” 
 
 “ He did not like j r ou noticing Mr. Gore 
 was away ” 
 
 “ Of course I noticed it — surely he could 
 not be jealous of that ! ” 
 
 “ I should not think he could be jealous,” 
 Mariquita agreed, too readily to please 
 Sarella. “ But I did not think of it. I am 
 sure he does not dislike you. You cannot 
 think he does.” 
 
 Sarella was far from thinking it. But she 
 had wanted Mariquita to say more, and was 
 only partly satisfied. 
 
 “ He would not like me to go away?” she 
 suggested. 
 
 “ Oh, no. The contrary.” 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 58 
 
 “Not even if it were advantageous to 
 me?” 
 
 “ How advantageous?” 
 
 “ If I were to be going to a home of my 
 own? Going, for instance, to be married?” 
 “That would surprise him . . .” 
 
 Sarella was not pleased at this. 
 
 “ Surprise him! Why should it surprise 
 him that anyone should marry me?” 
 
 “ There is no reason. Only he does not 
 imagine that there is someone. If there is 
 someone he would suppose you had not been 
 willing to marry him by your coming here 
 instead.” 
 
 “ Is she stupid or cautious?” Sarella 
 asked herself. “ She will say nothing.” 
 Mariquita was neither cautious nor stupid. 
 She was only ignorant of Sarella’s purpose, 
 and by no means awake to her father’s. 
 
 “It is terribly hot out here,” Sarella 
 grumbled, “ and there is such a glare. I shall 
 go in and study.” 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 Mariquita did not go in too. She did not find 
 it hot, nor did the glare trouble her. The air 
 was full of life and vigour, and she had no 
 sense of lassitude. There was, indeed, a 
 breeze from the far-off Rockies, and to her it 
 seemed cool enough, though the sun was so 
 nearly directly overhead that her figure cast 
 only a very stunted shadow of herself. In the 
 long grass the breeze made a slight rustle, but 
 there was no other sound. 
 
 Mariquita did not want to be indoors ; out- 
 side, here on the tilted prairie, she was alone 
 and not lonely. The tilt of the vast space 
 around her showed chiefly in this— that east- 
 ward the horizon was visibly lower than at the 
 western rim of the prairie. The prairie was 
 not really flat : between her and both horizons 
 there lay undulations, those between her and 
 the western rising into mesas, which, with a 
 haze so light as only to tell in the great 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 55 
 
 distance, hid the distant barrier of the Rocky 
 Mountains, whose foot-hills even were beyond 
 the frontiers of this State. 
 
 She knew well where they were, though, 
 and knew almost exactly beyond which point 
 of the far horizon lay Loretto Heights beyond 
 Denver, and the Convent. 
 
 Somehow the coming of these two new 
 units to the range-life had pushed the Convent 
 farther away still. 
 
 But Mariquita’s thoughts never rested in 
 the mere memories hanging like a slowly 
 fading arras around that long-concluded 
 convent life. What it had given her was more 
 than the memories and was her’s still. 
 
 As to the mere memories, she knew that 
 with slow, but increasing pace they were 
 receding from her, till on time’s horizon they 
 would end in a haze, golden but vague and 
 formless. Voices once clearly recalled were 
 losing tone ; faces, whose features had once 
 risen before the eye of memory with little less 
 distinctness than that with which she had 
 seen them when physically present, arose now 
 blurred like faces passing in a fog. Even their 
 individuality, depending less on feature than 
 expression, was no longer easily recoverable. 
 
56 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 She had been used to remember this and 
 that nun by her very footsteps : now the nuns 
 moved, a mere group in one costume, sound- 
 lessly, with no footstep at all. 
 
 Of this gradual loss of what had been 
 almost her only private possession she made 
 no inward wistful complaint : Mariquita was 
 not morbid, nor melancholy. The operation 
 of a natural law of life could not fill her with 
 the poet’s rebellious outcry. To all law 
 indeed she yielded without protest, whether it 
 implied submission without inward revolt to 
 the mere shackles of circumstance, or sub- 
 mission to her father’s dominance ; for it was 
 not in her fashion of mind to form a hypothesis, 
 such hypothesis, for instance, as that of her 
 father calling upon her to take some course 
 opposed to conscience. Though her gaze was 
 turned towards the point of the horizon, 
 under which the convent and its intimates 
 were, it was not simply to dream of them that 
 she yielded herself. 
 
 All that life had had a centre — not for her- 
 self only, but for all there. The simplicity of 
 the life consisted, above all, in the simplicity 
 of its object. Its routine, almost mechanically 
 regular, was not mechanical because of 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 57 
 
 its central meaning. No doubt the “ work ” 
 of the nuns was education, but their 
 work of education was service of a Master. 
 And the Master was Himself the real object, 
 the centre of the work, as carried on within 
 those quiet, busy walls. Mariquita no longer 
 formed a part, though the work was 
 still operative in her, and had not ceased 
 with her removal from the workers : but she 
 was as near as ever to its centre, and was now 
 more concerned with the ultimate object of 
 the work than with the work. 
 
 Her memories were weakening in colour 
 and definiteness, but her possession was not 
 decreased, her possession was the Master who 
 possessed herself. 
 
 The simplicity that Gore had from the first 
 noted in her, without being able to inform 
 himself wherein it consisted, but which he 
 venerated without knowing its source, which 
 he knew was noble, was first that Mariquita 
 did in fact live and move and have her being 
 as nominally all His creatures do, in the 
 Master of that vanished convent life. What 
 the prairie was to her body, surrounding it, 
 its sole background and scene and stage of 
 action, He was to her inward, very vivid, 
 
58 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 wholly silent life ; what the prairie was to 
 her healthy lungs, He was to her soul, its 
 breath, “ inspiration.” Banal and stale as 
 such metaphor is, in her the two lives were so 
 unified (in this was the rarity of her 
 “ simplicity ”) that it was at least completely 
 accurate. 
 
 With Mariquita that which we call the 
 supernatural life was not occasional and 
 spasmodic. That inspiration of Our Lord was 
 not, as with so many, a gidp, or periodic series 
 of gulps, but a breathing as steady and sound- 
 less as the natural breathing of her strong, 
 sane, flawless body. 
 
 She did not, like the self-conscious pietist, 
 listen to it. She did not, like the pathological 
 pietist, test its pulse or temperature. The 
 pathological pietist is still self-student, though 
 studious of self in a new relation, still breathes 
 her own breath at second-hand, and re- 
 mains indoors within the four walls of herself. 
 
 Of herself Mariquita knew little. That God 
 had given her, in truth, existence ; that 
 she knew. That she was, because He 
 chose. That He had been born, and died, 
 and lived again, for her sake, as much 
 as for the sake of any one of all the saints, 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 59 
 
 though not more than for the sake of the 
 human being in all the world who thought 
 least of Him : that she knew. That He loved 
 her incomparably better than she could love 
 herself or any other person. That she knew 
 with a reality of knowledge greater than that 
 with which any lover ever knows himself 
 beloved by the lover who would give and lose 
 everything for him. That He had already set 
 in her another treasure, the capacity of loving 
 Him, that also she knew with ineffable 
 reverence and gladness, and that the power of 
 loving Him grew in her, as the power of 
 knowing Him grew. 
 
 But concerning herself Mariquita knew little 
 except such things as these. She had studied 
 neither her own capacities nor her own 
 limitations, neither her tastes, nor her gifts. 
 That Sarella thought her stupid she was 
 hardly aware, and less than half aware that 
 Sarella was wrong. No human creature had 
 ever told her that she was beautiful, and she 
 had never made any guess on the subject with 
 herself. She never wondered if she were 
 happy, or ever unjustly disinherited of the 
 means of happiness. Whether, in less strait 
 thrall of circumstance, she might be of more 
 
60 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 consequence, even of more use, she never 
 debated. She had not dreamed of being 
 heroic ; had no chafing at absence of either 
 sphere or capacity for being brilliant. Her 
 life was passing in a silence singularly pro- 
 found among the lives of God’s other human 
 creatures, and its silence, unhumanness, 
 oblivion (that deepest of oblivion lying 
 beneath what has been known though for- 
 gotten) did not vex her, and was never 
 thought of. Her duties were coarse and 
 common ; but they were those God had set 
 in her way and sight, and she had no im- 
 patience of them, no scorn for them : but 
 
 just did them. They were not more coarse 
 or common than those He had himself found 
 to His hand, and done, in the house at 
 Nazareth where Joseph was master, and, after 
 Joseph, Mary was mistress, and He, their 
 Creator, third, to obey and serve them. 
 
 It would be greatly unjust to Mariquita to 
 say that the monotone of her life was made 
 golden by the bright haze in which it moved. 
 She lived not in a dream but in an atmosphere. 
 She was not a dreamy person, moving through 
 realities without consciousness of them. She 
 saw all around her, with living interest, only 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 61 
 
 she saw beyond them with interest deeper still, 
 or rather their own significance for her was 
 made deeper by her sense of what was beyond 
 them, and to which they, like herself, be- 
 longed. She was very conscious of her 
 neighbours, not only of the human neigh- 
 bours, but also of the live creatures not 
 human : and each of these had, in her 
 reverence, a definite sacredness as coming like 
 herself from the hand of God. 
 
 There was nothing pantheistic in this ; 
 seeing everything as God’s she did not see it 
 itself Divine : but every natural object was to 
 her clear vision but a thread in the clear, 
 transparent veil through which God showed 
 Himself everywhere. When St. Francis 
 “ preached to the birds ” he was in fact 
 listening to their sermon to him : and 
 Mariquita, in her close neighbourly friend- 
 ship with the small wild creatures of the 
 prairie, was only worshipping the ineffable, 
 kind friendliness of God, Who had made, 
 and who fed, them also. The love she 
 gave them was only one of the myriad 
 silent expressions of her love for Him, who 
 loved them. They were easier and simpler to 
 understand than her human neighbours. It 
 
62 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 was not that, for an instant, she thought them 
 on the same plane of interest — but we must 
 here interrupt ourselves as she was interrupted. 
 
L 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Mariquita had been alone a long time when 
 Gore, riding home, came suddenly upon her. 
 
 She was sitting where a clump of trees cast, 
 now, a shadow : and it was only in coming 
 round them that he saw her when already 
 very near her. The ground was soft there, 
 and his horse’s hoofs had made scarcely any 
 sound. 
 
 She turned her head, and he saluted her, at 
 the same moment slipping from the saddle. 
 
 “ I thought you were far away,” she said. 
 “ I have been far away — at Maxwell. It 
 has been a long ride.” 
 
 “Yes, that is a long way,” she said. “But 
 I never go there.” 
 
 “ No? I went to hear Mass.” 
 
 She was surprised, never having thought 
 that he was a Catholic. 
 
 “ I did not know you were a Catholic,” 
 she told him. 
 
64 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 “No wonder. I have been here a month 
 and never been to Mass before.” 
 
 “ It is so far. I never go.” 
 
 “ You are a Catholic, then?” 
 
 “ Oh, yes, I think all Spaniards are 
 Catholics.” 
 
 “ But not all Americans,” Gore suggested 
 smiling. 
 
 “No. And of course, we are Americans, 
 my father and I.” 
 
 “ Exactly. No doubt I knew your names, 
 both surname and Christian name, were 
 Spanish, and I supposed you were of Catholic 
 descent ” 
 
 “ Only,” she interrupted with a quiet 
 matter-of-factness, “ you saw we never went 
 to Mass.” 
 
 “ Perhaps a priest comes here sometimes 
 and gives you Mass.” 
 
 “No, never. If it were not so very far I 
 suppose my father would let me ride down to 
 Maxwell occasionally at all events. But he 
 would not let me go alone, and none of the 
 men are Catholics, besides he would not wish 
 me to go with one of them : and then it 
 would be necessary to go down on Saturday 
 and sleep there. Of course he would not 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 65 
 
 permit that. But,” and she did not smile as 
 she said this, “ it must seem strange to you, 
 who are a Catholic, to think that I, who am 
 one also, should never hear Mass. Since I left 
 the Convent and came home I do not hear it. 
 That may scandalize you.” 
 
 “ I shall never be scandalized by you,” he 
 answered : without smiling either. 
 
 “ That is best,” she said. “ It is generally 
 foolish to be scandalized, because we can 
 know so little about each other’s case.” 
 
 She paused a moment, and he thought how 
 little need she could ever have of any 
 charitable suspension of judgment. He knew 
 well enough by instinct, that this inability of 
 hers to hear Mass must be the great disinherit- 
 ance of her life here on the prairie, her 
 submission to it her great obedience. 
 
 “ But,” she went on earnestly, “ I hope 
 you will not take any scandal at my father 
 either — from my saying that he would not 
 permit my going down to Maxwell and 
 staying there all night on Saturday so as to 
 hear Mass on Sunday morning. (There, is, 
 you know, only one Mass there, and that very 
 early, because the priest has to go far into the 
 country on the other side of Maxwell to give 
 £ 
 
66 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 another Mass.) We know no family down 
 there with whom I could stay. He would 
 think it impossible I should stay with strange 
 people — or in an hotel. Our Spanish ideas 
 would forbid that.” 
 
 “ Oh, yes, I can fully understand. You 
 need not fear my being so stupid as to take 
 scandal. I have all my life had enough to do 
 being scandalized at myself.” 
 
 “ Ah, yes! That is so. One finds that 
 always. Only one knows that God is more 
 indulgent to one’s faults than one has learned 
 to be oneself : that patience comes so very 
 slowly, and slower still the humility that 
 would teach one to be never surprised at any 
 fault in oneself.” 
 
 Gore reverenced her too truly to say “Any 
 fault would surprise me in you.” He only 
 assented to her words, as if they were plain 
 and cold matter-of-fact, and let her go on for 
 he knew she had more to say. 
 
 “ I would like,” she told him, “ to finish 
 about my father, because to you he may 
 seem just careless. You may think 4 But 
 why should not he take her down to Maxwell 
 and hear Mass himself also?’ Coming from 
 the usual life of Catholics to this life of ours 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 67 
 
 on the prairies it may easily occur to you like 
 that. You cannot possibly know — as if you 
 had read it in a book — a man’s life like my 
 fathers’. He was born far away from here 
 out in the desert — in New Mexico. His 
 father baptized him — just as he baptized me. 
 There was no priest. There was no Mass. 
 How could he learn to think it a necessary 
 part of life ; no one can learn to think 
 necessary what is impossible. From that 
 desert he came to this wilderness : very 
 
 different, but just as empty. No Mass here 
 either, no priest. How could he be expected 
 to think it necessary to ride far, far away to 
 find Mass? It would be to him like riding 
 away to find a picture gallery. He couldn’t 
 be away every Saturday and Sunday. That 
 would not be possible : and what is not 
 possible is no sin. And what is no 'sin on 
 three Sundays out of four, or one Sunday out 
 of two, how should it seem a sin on the other 
 Sunday? I hope you will understand all 
 that.” 
 
 “ Indeed, yes! I hope you do not think 
 I have been judging your father ! That would 
 be a great impertinence.” 
 
 “Towards God — yes. That is His business, 
 
68 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 and no one else understands it at all. No, I 
 did not think you would have been judging. 
 Only I thought you might be troubled a 
 little. It is a great loss, my father’s and 
 mine, that we live out here where there is no 
 Mass, and where there are no Sacraments. 
 But our Lord does the same things differ- 
 ently. It is not hard for Him to make up 
 losses.” 
 
 One thing which struck the girl’s hearer was 
 that the grave simplicity of her tones 
 was never sad. It seemed to him the perfec- 
 tion of obedience. 
 
 “ My father,” she went on, “ is very good. 
 He always tells the truth. Those who deal in 
 horses are said to tell many lies about them. 
 He never does. He is very just — to the men, 
 and everybody. And he does not grind them, 
 nor does he insult them ip reproof. He hates 
 laziness and stupidity, and will not suffer 
 either. Yet he does not gibe in finding fault 
 nor say things, being master, to which they 
 being servants may not retort. That makes 
 fault-finding bitter and intolerable. He 
 works very hard and takes no pleasure. He 
 greatly loved my mother, and was in all 
 things a true husband. That was a great 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 69 
 
 burden God laid on him — the loss of her, but 
 he carried it always in silence. You can hardly 
 know all these things.” 
 
 Gore saw that she was more observant than 
 he had fancied. That she had been conscious 
 of criticism in him of her father, and was 
 earnest in exacting justice for him. 
 
 “ But,” he said, “ I shall not forget them 
 now.” 
 
 “ I shall thank you for that,” she told him, 
 beginning to move forward towards the home- 
 stead that was full in sight, half a mile away. 
 “ And it will be getting very late. Tea is 
 much later on Sunday, for the men like to 
 sleep, but it will be time now.” 
 
 They walked on together, side by side, he 
 leading his horse by the bridle hung loosely 
 over his shoulder. The horse after its very 
 long journey of to-day and yesterday was tired 
 out, and only too willing to go straight to his 
 stable. 
 
 They did not now talk much. Don 
 Joaquin, watching them as they came from 
 the house door, saw that. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 “ Mr. Gore came back with you,” he said to 
 Mariquita as she joined him. Gore had gone 
 round to the stables with his horse. 
 
 “ Yes. As he came back from Maxwell 
 he passed the place where I was sitting, and 
 we came on together — after talking for a 
 time.” 
 
 Mariquita did not think her father was cross- 
 examining her. Nor was he. He was not 
 given to inquisitiveness, and seldom scrutinized 
 her doings. 
 
 “ Mr. Gore,” she continued, “ went to 
 Maxwell for the sake of going to Mass.” 
 
 “So he is a Catholic!” and Mariquita 
 observed with pleasure that her father spoke 
 in a tone of satisfaction. He had never before 
 appeared to be in the least concerned with the 
 religion of any of the men about the place. 
 
 That night, after Sarella and Mariquita had 
 gone to bed, Don Joaquin had another satis- 
 faction. He and Gore were alone, smoking : 
 
MAMQUITA 
 
 71 
 
 all the large party ate together, but the cow- 
 boys went off to their own quarters after 
 meals. Only Don Joaquin, his daughter, 
 Sarella and Gore slept in the dwelling-house. 
 So high up above sea-level it was cold enough 
 at night, and the log fire was pleasant. 
 
 What gave him satisfaction was that Gore 
 asked him about the price of a range, and 
 whether a suitable one was to be had any- 
 where near. 
 
 4 4 It would not be,” Don Joaquin bade him 
 note, 44 the price of the range only. Without 
 some capital it would be throwing money 
 away to buy one.” 
 
 “Of course. What would range and stock 
 and all cost?” 
 
 “ That would depend on the size of the 
 range, and the amount of stock it would bear. 
 And also on whether the range were very far 
 out, like this one. If it were near a town, 
 and the railway it would cost more to buy.” 
 
 Gore quite understood that, and Don 
 Joaquin spoke of “ Blaine’s ” range. 44 It 
 lies nearer Maxwell than this. But it is not so 
 large : and Blaine has never made much of it 
 — he had not capital enough to put on it the 
 stock it should have had : and he was never 
 
72 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 the right man. A townsman in all his bones, 
 and his wife towny too. And their girls 
 worse. He wants to clear. He will never do 
 good there.” 
 
 The two men discussed the matter at some 
 length. It seemed to the elder of them that 
 Gore would seriously entertain the plan, and 
 had the money for the purchase. 
 
 “I have thought sometimes,” said Joaquin, 
 “ of buying Blaine’s myself.” 
 
 “ Of course I would not think of it if you 
 wanted it. I would not even make any 
 enquiry — that would be sending the price 
 up.” 
 
 “ Yes. But, if you decide to go in for it, 
 I shall not mind. I have land enough and 
 stock enough and work enough. I should 
 have bought it if I had a son growing up.” 
 
 It w T as satisfactory to Don Joaquin to find 
 that Gore could buy a large range and afford 
 capital to stock it. If he went on with such 
 a purchase it would prove him “ substantial 
 as to conditions.” And he was a Catholic, 
 also a good thing. 
 
 Only Sarella should be a Catholic also. “So 
 you went down to Maxwell to go to Mass,” he 
 said just as they were putting out their pipes 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 78 
 
 to go to bed. “ That was not out of place. 
 Perhaps one Saturday we may go down to- 
 gether.” 
 
 Gore said, of course, that he would be glad 
 of his company. 
 
 “ It would not be myself only,” Don 
 Joaquin explained, “ I should take my 
 daughter and her cousin.” 
 
 When Gore had an opportunity of telling 
 this to Mariquita she was full of gladness. 
 
 “See!” she said, “how strong good 
 example is ! ” 
 
 “ Is your cousin then also a Catholic?” he 
 asked, surprised without knowing why. 
 
 “ Oh, no ! My father regrets it, and would 
 like her to be one. That shows he thinks of 
 religion more than you might have guessed.” 
 
 Gore thought that it showed something else 
 as well. It did not however, seem to have 
 occurred to Mariquita that her father wanted 
 to marry her cousin. 
 
 Sarella strongly approved the idea of going 
 down, all four of them together, to Maxwell 
 some Saturday. 
 
 “ Of course,” she said, “ it would be for 
 two nights, at least. He couldn’t expect us 
 to ride back on the Sunday. It will be a 
 
74 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 treat — we must insist on starting early 
 enough to get down there before the shops 
 shut. I daresay there will be a theatre.” 
 Mariquita, suddenly, after five years, 
 promised the chance of hearing Mass and 
 going to Holy Communion, was not surprised 
 that Sarella should only think of it as an 
 outing : she was not a Catholic. But she 
 thought it as well to give Sarella a hint. 
 
 “ I expect,” she said, “ father will be 
 hoping that you would come to Mass with 
 us.” 
 
 “I? Do you think that? He knows I am 
 not a Catholic — why should he care?” 
 
 “ Oh, he would care. I am sure of that.” 
 Sarella laughed. 
 
 “ You sly puss ! I believe you want to 
 convert me,” she said, shaking her head 
 jocularly at Mariquita. 
 
 “ Of course I should be glad if you were a 
 Catholic. Any Catholic would.” 
 
 “ I daresay you would. But your father 
 never troubles himself about such things — he 
 leaves them to the women. He wouldn’t 
 care.” 
 
 “ Yes, he would. You must not judge my 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 75 
 
 father — he thinks without speaking : he is a 
 very silent person.” 
 
 Sarella laughed again. 
 
 “ Not so silent as you imagine,” she said 
 slyly, “ he talks to me, my dear.” 
 
 “ Very likely. I daresay you are easier to 
 talk to than I am. For I too am silent — I have 
 not seen towns and things like you.” 
 
 “ It does make a difference,” Sarella 
 admitted complacently. Then, with more 
 covert interest than she showed, “ If you 
 really think he would like me to go with you 
 to Mass, I should be glad to please him. 
 After all one should encourage him in this 
 desire to resume his religious duties. Perhaps 
 he would take us again.” 
 
 “ I am quite sure he would like you to hear 
 Mass with us,” Mariquita repeated slowly. 
 
 “ Then I will do so. You had better tell 
 me about it — one would not like to do the 
 wrong thing.” 
 
 Perhaps Mariquita told her more about it 
 than Sarella had intended. 
 
 “ She is tremendously in earnest anyway,” 
 Sarella decided, 4 4 she can talk on that eagerly 
 enough. I must say,” she thought, good- 
 naturedly, “ I am glad her father’s giving her 
 
76 
 
 MARXQUITA 
 
 the chance of doing it. I had no idea she felt 
 about it like that. She is good. To care so 
 much and never say a word of what it is to her 
 not to have it. I never thought there was an 
 ounce of religion about the place. She 
 evidently thinks her father cares too. I should 
 want some persuading of that. But she may 
 be right in saying he expects me to go to his 
 church. She is very positive. And some men 
 are like that — their women must do what they 
 do. They leave church alone for twenty years 
 but when they begin to go to church their 
 women must go at once. And the Don is 
 masterful enough. Perhaps he thinks it’s time 
 he began to remember his soul. If so he is 
 sure to begin by bothering about other 
 people’s souls. She thinks a lot more of him 
 than he thinks of her. In his way, though, 
 he is just as Spanish as she is : I suppose that’s 
 ■why I’m to go to Mass.” 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Don Joaquin had sounded Mariquita with 
 reference to Sarella’s religion. It suited him 
 to sound Sarella in reference to Mariquita — 
 and another person. This he would not have 
 done had he not regarded Sarella as 
 potentially a near relation. 
 
 “Mr. Gore talks about interesting things?” 
 he observed tentatively. 
 
 “What people call 4 interesting things ’ 
 are sometimes very tedious,” she answered 
 smartly, intending to please him. 
 
 He was a little pleased, but not diverted 
 from his purpose. He never was diverted 
 from his purposes. 
 
 “ He is a different sort of person from any 
 Mariquita has known,” he remarked, “ con- 
 versation like his must interest her.” 
 
 “ Only she does not converse with him.” 
 
 “ But she hears.” 
 
 “ Oh! Mariquita hears everything.” 
 
 “You don’t think she finds him “tedious?” 
 
78 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 ‘ 4 Oh no ! She does not know anyone is 
 tedious.” It by no means struck her father 
 that this was a fault in her. 
 
 “It is better to be content with one’s 
 company,” he said. Then “ He does not 
 find her tedious, I think, though she speaks 
 little.” 
 
 “Mr. Gore? Anything but!” And 
 Sarella laughed. 
 
 Don Joaquin waited for more, and got it. 
 
 “ Nobody could interest him more,” she 
 declared with conviction, shaking her head 
 with pregnant meaning. 
 
 “Ah! So I have thought sometimes,” 
 Don Joaquin agreed. 
 
 “ Anyone could see it. Except Mariquita,” 
 she proceeded. 
 
 “ Mariquita not?” 
 
 “ Not she! Mariquita’s eyes look so high 
 she cannot see you and me, or Mr. Gore.” 
 
 After “ you and me ” Sarella had made an 
 infinitesimal pause, and had darted an instant- 
 aneous glance at Don Joaquin. He had 
 scarcely time to catch the glance before it was 
 averted and Sarella added “ or Mr. Gore.” 
 
 Don Joaquin did not think it objectionable 
 in his daughter “ not to see ” “ you and me ” 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 79 
 
 — himself and Sarella — too hastily. But it 
 would ultimately be advisable that she should 
 see what was coming before it actually came. 
 That would save telling. Neither would he 
 have been pleased if she had quickly scented 
 a lover in Mr. Gore : that would have offended 
 her father’s sense of dignity. Nor would it 
 have been advisable for her to suspect a lover 
 in Mr. Gore at any time, if Mr. Gore were 
 not intending to be one. Once he was really 
 desirous of being one, and her father 
 approved, she might as well awake to it. 
 
 “It is true,” he said, “ Mariquita has not 
 those ideas.” 
 
 There was undoubtedly a calm communi- 
 cation in his tone. Sarella could not decide 
 whether it implied censure of “ those ideas ” 
 elsewhere. 
 
 “Not seeing what can be seen,” she 
 suggested with some pique, “ may deceive 
 others. Thus false hopes are given.” 
 
 “ Mariquita has given no hopes to anyone,” 
 her father declared sharply. 
 
 “ Certainly not. Yet Mr. Gore may think 
 that what is visible must be seen — like his 
 ‘ interest ’ in her : and that since it is seen 
 and not disapproved . . .” 
 
80 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 “ Only, as you said, Mariquita doesn’t 
 see.” 
 
 “ He may not understand that. He may 
 see nothing objectionable in himself . . 
 
 “ There is nothing objectionable. The 
 contrary.” 
 
 And Sarella knew from his tone that Don 
 Joaquin did not disapprove of Mr. Gore as a 
 possible son-in-law. 
 
 “ How hard it is,” she thought, “ to get 
 these Spaniards to say anything out. Why 
 can’t they say what they mean?” 
 
 Sarella was not deficient in a sort of super- 
 ficial good-nature. It seemed to her that she 
 would have to “ help things along.” She 
 thought it out of the question for Mariquita 
 to go on indefinitely at the range, doing the 
 work of three women for no reward, and 
 rapidly losing her youth, letting her life be 
 simply wasted. There had never been any- 
 one before Mr. Gore, and never would be 
 anyone else : it would be a providential way 
 out of the present impossible state of things 
 if he and Mariquita should make a match of it. 
 And why shouldn’t they? She did not believe 
 that he was actually in love with Mariquita 
 yet : perhaps he never would be till he 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 81 
 
 discovered in her some sort of response. 
 And Mariquita if left to herself was capable 
 of going on for ten years just as she was. 
 
 44 Mr. Gore,” she told Don Joaquin, 44 is 
 not the sort of man to throw himself at a girl’s 
 head if he imagined it would be unpleasant to 
 her.” 
 
 44 Why should he be unpleasant to her?” 
 
 44 No reason at all. And he isn’t un- 
 pleasant to her. Only she never thinks of — 
 that sort of thing.” 
 
 Her father did not want her to 44 think of 
 that sort of thing ” — till called upon. 
 Sarella saw that, and thought him as stupid 
 as his daughter. 
 
 His idea of what would be correct was that 
 Gore should 44 speak to him,” that he should 
 (after due examination of his conditions) 
 signify approval, first to Gore himself, and 
 then to Mariquita, whereupon it would be her 
 duty to listen encouragingly to Mr. Gore’s 
 proposals. Don Joaquin made Sarella under- 
 stand that these were his notions. 
 
 (“ How Spanish!” she thought.) 
 
 44 You’ll never get it done that way,” she 
 told him shortly. 44 Mr. Gore will not say a 
 
 F 
 
82 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 word to you till he thinks Mariquita would 
 not be offended ” 
 
 “ Why should she be offended !” 
 
 “ She would be, if Mr. Gore came to you 
 till she had given him some cause for 
 believing she cared at all for him. He knows 
 that well enough. You may be sure that 
 while she seems unaware of his taking an 
 interest in her he will never give you the least 
 hint. He doesn’t want to marry her — yet. 
 He won’t let himself want it before she gives 
 some sign. 
 
 Sarella understood her own meaning quite 
 well : but Don Joaquin did not understand it 
 so clearly. 
 
 He took an early opportunity of saying to 
 his daughter : 
 
 “ I think Mr. Gore a nice man. He is 
 correct. I approve of him. And it is an 
 advantage that he is a Catholic.” 
 
 To call it “an advantage ” seemed to 
 Mariquita a dry way of putting it : but then 
 her father was dry. 
 
 “ Living in the house,” he continued, 
 wishing she would say something, “ he must 
 be intimate with us. I find him suitable for 
 that. One would not care for it in every case. 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 83 
 
 Had he turned out a different sort of person 
 I should not have wished for any friendship 
 between him and yourselves — Sarella and 
 you. It might have been out of place.” 
 
 44 I do not think there would ever be much 
 friendship between Sarella and him,” said 
 Mariquita, 44 she hardly listens when he talks 
 about things ” 
 
 44 But you should listen. It would be not 
 courteous to make him think you found his 
 conversation tedious.” 
 
 44 Tedious! I listen with interest.” 
 
 44 No doubt. And there is nothing out of 
 place in your showing it. He is no longer a 
 stranger to us.” 
 
 44 He is kind,” she said, 4 4 He worked hard 
 to help Jack in getting his shed fit for Ginger. 
 It was he who built the partitions. Jack told 
 me. Mr. Gore said nothing about it. Also 
 he was good to Ben Sturt when he hurt his 
 knee and could not ride : he went and sat with 
 him, chatting, and read funny books to 
 him. He is a very kind person. I am glad 
 you like him — I was not sure.” 
 
 44 I waited. One wishes to know a stranger 
 before liking him, as you call it ; what is more 
 
84 MARIQUITA 
 
 important I approve of him, and find him 
 correct.” 
 
 Whether this helped much we cannot say. 
 Sarella didn’t think so, though Don Joaquin 
 reported it to her with much complacence. 
 
 “ She must know now,” he said, “ that I 
 authorize him.” 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 Jack sounded Mr. Gore’s praises loudly in 
 Mariquita’s ears, and she heard them gladly. 
 She thought well of her fellow-creatures, and 
 it was always pleasant to her to hear them 
 commended. 
 
 Jack also bragged a little of his diplomacy, 
 bidding his daughter note how Miss 
 Mariquita had been pleased by his praise of 
 her sweet-heart. 
 
 “ Miss Mariquita has not even got a sweet- 
 heart,” Ginger declared, “ and maybe never 
 will. It isn’t the way of her. She was just 
 as proud when you said a good word for Ben 
 Sturt.” 
 
 “ Ben Sturt! What’s he to the young 
 mistress ? ’ ’ 
 
 “ Just nothing at all — not in that way. 
 Nor yet Mr. Gore isn’t. And the more’s the 
 pity. But she’s good-hearted. She likes to 
 hear good of folk — as much as some likes to 
 hear ill of anybody, no matter who,” 
 
86 MARIQUITA 
 
 Jack was a little discouraged — blit not 
 effectually. 
 
 Mr. Gore was much too slow, he thought. 
 Why should Miss Mariquita be thinking of 
 him unless he “let on ” how much he was 
 thinking of her? 
 
 “ Did you ever lie under an apple-tree 
 when the blossom was on it?” he asked Gore 
 one day. 
 
 “ I daresay I have.” 
 
 “ And expected to have your mouth full of 
 apples when there was only blossom on it?” 
 
 Jack forced so much meaning into his ugly 
 old face that Gore could discern the allegorical 
 intent. He was very amused. 
 
 “ There’d never be much chance of apples,” 
 he said carelessly, “ if the tree was shaken till 
 the blossom fell off. The wind spoils more 
 blossom than the frost does.” 
 
 Jack was not the only one who thought 
 Gore slow in his wooing : the cow-boys 
 
 thought so too, though they did not, like Jack, 
 find any fault with him for his slowness. In 
 general they would have been more critical of 
 rapidity and apparent success. Ben Sturt had 
 learned to like him cordially, and wished him 
 success, but Ben was of opinion that more 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 87 
 
 haste would have been worse speed. He 
 thought that Gore deserved Mariquita if any- 
 one could, but was sure that even Gore would 
 have to wait long and be very patient and 
 careful. To Ren Mariquita seemed almost 
 like one belonging to another world, certainly 
 living on a plane above his comprehension, 
 where ordinary love-making would be, some- 
 how, unfitting and hopeless. It had always 
 met with her father’s cool approbation that 
 Mariquita kept herself aloof from the young 
 men about the place. But she was not wanting 
 in interest for them. They were her neigh- 
 bours, and she, who had so much interest for 
 all her little dumb neighbours of the prairie, 
 had a much higher interest in these bigger, 
 but not much less dumb, neighbours of the 
 homestead. They were more than a mere 
 group to her. Each individual in the group 
 was, she knew, as dear to God as herself, had 
 been created by God for the same purpose as 
 herself, and for the soul of each, Christ upon 
 the Cross had been in as bitter labour as for 
 the soul of any one of the saints. She was 
 the last creature on earth to regard as of mere 
 casual interest to herself those in whom God’s 
 interest was so deep, and close, and unfailing. 
 
88 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 Perhaps they were rough ; it might be that 
 of the great things of which Mariquita herself 
 thought so habitually they thought little and 
 seldom : but she did not think them bad. 
 She thought more of them than they guessed, 
 and liked them better than they in the least 
 imagined. She would have wished to serve 
 and help them ; and was not indolent, but 
 humble concerning herself, and shy. She 
 worked for them, more perhaps than her 
 father thought necessary : in that way she 
 could serve them. But she could not preach 
 to them, nor exhort them. She would have 
 shrunk instinctively, not from the danger of 
 ridicule, but from the danger that the ridicule 
 might fall on religion itself, and not merely on 
 her. She would have dreaded the risk of mis- 
 representing religion to them, of giving them 
 ideas of God such as would repel them from 
 Him. She knew that speech was not easy to 
 her, eloquent speech was no gift of hers ; she 
 did not believe herself to have any readiness 
 of expressing what she felt and knew, and 
 did not credit herself with great knowledge. 
 She did not really put them down as being 
 entirely ignorant of what she did know. 
 
 The idea of a woman’s preaching would have 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 89 
 
 shocked Mariquita too : to her it would have 
 seemed “ out of place.” She was a humble 
 girl, with a diffidence not universal among 
 those who are themselves trying to serve God, 
 some of whom are apt to be slow at under- 
 standing that others may be as near Him as 
 themselves, though behaving differently, and 
 holding a different fashion of speech. 
 
 God who had made them must know more 
 about them, she felt, than she could. She did 
 not think she understood them very well, but 
 God had made the men and knew them as 
 well as He knew the women. She was, with 
 all her ignorance and her limited opportunities 
 of observation and understanding, able to see 
 much goodness among these neighbours of 
 hers : He must be able to see much more. 
 
 In reality Mariquita did more for them than 
 she had any idea of. They understood that in 
 her was something higher than their under- 
 standing : that her goodness was real they did 
 understand. It never shocked them as the 
 “ goodness ” of some good people would by 
 a first instinct have shocked them, by its 
 uncharity, its self-conscious superiority, its 
 selfishness, its complacence, its eagerness to 
 assume the Divine prerogative of judgment 
 
90 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 and of punishment. They were, perhaps un- 
 consciously, proud of her, who was so plainly 
 never proud of herself. They knew that she 
 w r as kind. They had penetration enough to be 
 aware that if she held her own way, in some 
 external aloofness, it was not out of cold 
 indifference, or self-centred pride, not even 
 out of a prudish shrinking from their rough- 
 ness. They became less rough. Their 
 behaviour in her sight and hearing was not 
 without effect upon their behaviour in her 
 absence. She taught them a reverence for 
 women that may only have begun in respect 
 for herself. Almost all of them cared enough 
 for her approval to try and become more 
 capable of deserving it. Some of them, God 
 who taught them knows how, became con- 
 scious of her lonely absorption in prayer, and 
 the prairie became less empty to them. 
 Probably none of them remained ignorant 
 that to the girl God was life and breath, hap- 
 piness and health, master and companion : 
 the explanation of herself and of her beauty. 
 They did not understand it all, but they saw 
 more than they understood. The loveliness of 
 each flower preached to Mariquita : sometimes 
 she would sit upon the ground, her heart 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 91 
 
 beating, holding in her hand one of those tiny 
 weed-like flowers that millions of eyes can over- 
 look without perceiving they are beautiful, 
 insignificant in size, without any blaze of 
 colour, and realize its marvel of loveliness with 
 a singular exultation : she would note the 
 exquisite perfection of its minute parts — that 
 each tiny spray was a string of stars, white, 
 or tenderest azure, or mauve, gold-centred, a 
 microscopic installation hidden all its life on 
 the prairie-floor, as if falling from heaven it 
 had grown smaller and smaller as it neared 
 the earth. Her heart beat, I say, as she 
 looked, and the light shining in her happy 
 eyes was exultation at the unimaginable 
 loveliness of God, who had imagined this 
 minutest creature, and thought it worth 
 while to conceive this and every other lovely 
 thing for the house even of His children’s 
 exile and probation, their waiting-room on 
 the upward road. So it preached to her the 
 Uncreated Beauty, and the unbeginning, 
 eternal love. As unconscious as was the little 
 flower of its fragrance, its loveliness and its 
 message, Mariquita, who could never have 
 preached, was giving her message too. 
 
 Her rough neighbours saw her near them 
 
92 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 and (perhaps without knowing that they knew 
 it) knew that that which made her rare and 
 exquisite was of Divine origin. She never 
 hinted covert exhortation in her talk. If she 
 spoke to any of them they could listen without 
 dread of some shrewdly folded rebuke. Yet 
 they could not get away from the fact that 
 she was herself a perpetual reminder of noble 
 purpose. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 What the cow-boys had come, with varying 
 degrees of slowness or celerity, to feel by 
 intuitions little instructed by experience or 
 reasoning, Gore had to arrive at by more 
 deliberate study. 
 
 He was more civilised and less instinctive. 
 He knew many more people, and had 
 experience, wanting to them, of many women 
 of fine and high character. What made the 
 rarity of Mariquita’s, instinct did not inform 
 him, and he had to observe and surmise. 
 
 He saw no books in the house, and did not 
 perceive how Mariquita could read : she must, 
 in the way of information and knowledge such 
 as most educated girls possess, be, as it were, 
 disinherited. Yet he did not feel that she was 
 ignorant. It is more ignorant to have 
 adopted false knowledge than to be unin- 
 formed. 
 
 Every day added to Gore’s sense of the 
 girl’s rarity and nobility. He admired her more 
 
94 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 and more, the reverence of his admiration 
 increasing with its growth. 
 
 Nor was his appreciation blind, or blinded. 
 He surmised a certain lack in her — the 
 absence of humour, and was, at anyrate, so far 
 correct that Mariquita was without the habit 
 of humour. Long after this time she was 
 thought by her companions to have a de- 
 lightful radiant cheerfulness like mirth. But 
 when Gore first knew her, what occasion had 
 she had for indulgence in the habit of humour ? 
 
 Her father’s house was not gay, and he 
 would have thought gaiety in it out of place. 
 Loud laughter might resound in the cow- 
 boys’ quarters but Don Joaquin would have 
 much disapproved any curiosity in his daughter 
 as to its cause. He seldom laughed himself 
 and never wished to make anyone else laugh. 
 His Spanish blood and his Indian blood 
 almost equally tended to make him regard 
 laughter and merriment as a slur on dignity. 
 
 Some of those who have attempted the 
 elusive feat of analysing the causes and origin 
 of humour lay down that it lies in a percep- 
 tion of the incongruous, the less fit. I should 
 be sorry to think that a complete account of 
 the matter. No doubt it describes the 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 95 
 
 occasion of much of our laughter, though not, 
 I refuse to believe, of all. 
 
 That sense of humour implies little charity, 
 and a good deal of conscious superiority. It 
 makes us laugh at accidents not agreeable to 
 those who suffer them, at uncouthness, ignor- 
 ances, solecisms, inferiorities, follies, blunders, 
 stupidities, unconsciously displayed weak- 
 nesses and faults. It is the sort of humour 
 that sets us laughing at a smartly dressed 
 person fallen into a filthy drain, at a 
 man who does not know how to eat decently, 
 at mispronunciation of names, and misap- 
 plication or oblivion of aspirates, at greediness 
 not veiled by politeness, at a man singing who 
 doesn’t know how. Now Mariquita had no 
 conceit and was steeped in charity, in big and 
 little things. In that sort of humour she 
 would have been unproficient, for she would 
 have thought too kindly of its butt to be able 
 to enjoy his misfortune. And, as has been 
 already said, she had no habit of the thing. 
 
 Gore, in accusing her of lack of humour, 
 felt that the accusation was a heavy one. It 
 was not quite unjust : we have partly 
 
 explained Mariquita’s deficiency without 
 entirely denying it, or pretending it was an 
 
96 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 attraction. No doubt she would have been a 
 greater laugher if she had been more ill- 
 natured, had had wider opportunities of 
 perceiving the absurdity of her contemporaries. 
 
 As for those queer and quaint quips of 
 circumstance that make the oddity of daily 
 life for some of us, few of them had enlivened 
 Mariquita’s. The chief occasion of general 
 gathering was round the table, where hunger 
 and haste were the most obvious characteristics 
 of the meeting. Till Gore came there had 
 been little conversation. It was not 
 Mariquita’s fault that she had been used 
 neither to see or hear much that was enter- 
 taining. Perhaps the facility of being 
 amused is an acquired taste : and even so the 
 faculty of humour is almost of necessity 
 dormant where scarcely anything offers for it 
 to work or feed upon. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 The projected visit to Maxwell did not 
 immediately take place. Don Joaquin was 
 seldom hasty in action, having a chronic, 
 habitual esteem for deliberation and deliber- 
 ateness too. 
 
 Sarella would have been impatient had she 
 not been sufficiently unwell to shrink for the 
 moment from the idea of a very long ride. 
 For the mere pleasure of riding she would 
 never have mounted a horse, she would only 
 ride when there was no other means of 
 arriving at some object or place not otherwise 
 attainable. 
 
 Gore, however, was again absent on the 
 second Saturday after his first visit to Maxwell. 
 And on this occasion his place was vacant at 
 breakfast. Nor was it till Monday afternoon 
 that he returned. 
 
 On that afternoon Mariquita had walked 
 out some distance across the prairie. Not in 
 
 G 
 
98 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 the direction of the Maxwell trail, but quite 
 in the opposite direction. 
 
 Her way brought her to what they called 
 Saul Bluff, a very low, broken ridge, sparsely 
 overgrown with small rather shabby trees. It 
 would scarcely have hidden the chimneys of a 
 cottage had there been any cottage on its 
 farther side : but there was none anywhere 
 near it. For many miles there was no 
 building, in any direction, except “ Don 
 Jo’s,” as, to its owner’s annoyance, his home- 
 stead was called. 
 
 When Mariquita had reached the top of 
 the bluff she took advantage of the slight 
 elevation on which she stood to look round 
 upon the great spread of country stretching 
 to the low horizon on every side. It was, like 
 most days here, a day of wind and sun. The 
 air was utterly pure and scentless ; the scent 
 was not fir-scent, and the scattered, windy 
 trees gave no smell. She saw a chip-munk 
 and laughed, as the sight of that queer little 
 creature, and its odd mixture of shyness and 
 effrontery always made her laugh. 
 
 It was even singularly clear, and the foot- 
 hills of the Rockies were just visible. The 
 trail, which ran over the bluff a little to her 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 99 
 
 left, was full in sight below her, but so little 
 used as to be slight enough. A mile further 
 on it crossed the river, and was too faint to be 
 seen beyond. The river was five miles behind 
 her as well as a mile in front, for it made a 
 big loop, north, and then, west-about, south- 
 ward. 
 
 She sat down and for a long time was rapt 
 in her own thoughts which were not, at first, 
 of any human person. Perhaps she would not 
 herself have said that she was praying. Rut 
 all prayer does not consist in begging favours 
 even for others. Its essence does not lie in 
 request, but in the lifting of self, heart and 
 mind, to God. The love of a child to its 
 father need not necessarily find its sole exer- 
 cise and expression in demand. Her thought 
 and love flew up to her Father and rested, 
 immeasurably happy. The real joys of her life 
 were in that presence. The sense of His love, 
 not merely for herself, was the higher bliss it 
 gave her : not merely for herself, I say, for 
 it spread as wide as all humanity, and her 
 own share in it was as little as a star in the 
 milky way in the whole glory what it is, for 
 all the saints in heaven and on earth, for all 
 sinners, for His great Mother, and, most 
 
100 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 immeasurable of all, the infinite perfection 
 of His love for Himself, of Father and Son 
 for the Holy Spirit, of Son and Spirit for the 
 Eternal Father, of Spirit and Father for the 
 Son. This stretched far beyond the reach of 
 her vision, but she looked as far as her human 
 sight could reach, as one looks on that much 
 of the mystic ocean that eye can hold. Not 
 separable from this joy in the Divine Love 
 was her joy in the Divine Beauty, of which all 
 created beauty sang, whether it were that of 
 the smallest flower or that of Christ’s Mother 
 herself. The wind’s clean breath whispered of 
 it; the vast loveliness of the enormous dome 
 above her, and the limitless expanse of (to her 
 at least) not less lovely earth on which that 
 dome rested witnessed to the infinite beauty 
 that had imagined and made them. 
 
 But sooner or later she must share, for in 
 that the silent tenderness of her nature 
 showed itself : she could not be content to 
 have her great happiness to herself, to enjoy 
 alone. So, presently, in her prayer she came, 
 as always, to gathering round her all whom 
 she knew and all whom she did not know. As 
 she would have wished them to think in their 
 prayer of her, so must she have them also in 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 101 
 
 the Divine Presence with her, lift their names 
 up to God, even their names which, unknown 
 to her, He knew as well as He knew her own. 
 
 Her living father and her dead mother, the 
 old school-friends and the nuns, the old 
 priest at Loretto, and a certain crooked old 
 gardener that had been there (crooked in 
 body, in face, and in temper) Sarella, and Mr. 
 Gore, and all the cow-boys — all these she 
 gathered into the loving arms of her memory, 
 and presented them at their Father’s feet. 
 Her way in this was her own way, and unlike 
 perhaps that of others. She had no idea of 
 bringing them to God’s memory, as if His 
 tenderness needed any reminder from her, 
 for always she heard Him saying “ Can you 
 teach Me pity and love?” She did not think 
 it depended on her that good should come to 
 them from Him. Were she to be lazy or 
 forgetful He would never let them suffer 
 through her neglect. They were immeas- 
 urably more His than they could be hers. 
 But she could not be at His feet and not in 
 her loving mind see them there beside her, 
 and she knew He chose that at His feet she 
 should not forget them. She could not dictate 
 to Him what He was to give them, in what 
 
102 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 fashion He should bless and help them. He 
 knew exactly. Her surmises must be 
 ignorant. 
 
 Therefore Mariquita’s prayer was more 
 wordless than common, less phrased : but its 
 intensity was more uncommon. Nor could it 
 be limited to those — a handful out of all His 
 children— whom she knew or had ever known. 
 There were all the rest — everywhere : those 
 who knew how to serve Him, and were doing 
 it, as she had never learned to serve : those 
 who had never heard His name, and those who 
 knew it but shrank from it as that of an 
 angry observer : those most hapless ones who 
 lived by disobeying Him, even by dragging 
 others down into the slough of disobedience : 
 the whole world’s sick, body-sick and soul- 
 sick : those who here are mad, and will find 
 reason only in heaven : the whole world’s 
 sorrowful ones, the luckless, those gripped in 
 the hard clutch of penury, or the sordid 
 clutch of debt ; the blind whose first experi- 
 ence of beauty will be perfect beauty, the 
 foully diseased, the deformed, the deaf and 
 dumb whose first speech will be their joining 
 in the songs of heaven, their first hearing that 
 of the music of heaven ... all these, and 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 103 
 
 many, many others she must bring about her 
 or her gladness in God’s nearness would be 
 selfishness. That nearness ! she felt Him much 
 nearer than was her own raiment, nearer than 
 was her own flesh. . . . 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 It was long after Mariquita had come to her 
 place upon the bluff that the sound of a horse 
 cantering towards it made her rise and go to 
 the farther westward edge of the bluff to 
 look. The horseman was quite near, below 
 her. It was Gore, and he saw her at the same 
 moment in which she saw him. He lifted his 
 big, wide-brimmed hat from his head and 
 waved it. It would never have even occurred 
 to her to be guilty of the churlishness of 
 turning away to go homeward. Her 
 thoughts, almost the only thing of her own 
 she had ever had, she was always ready to lay 
 aside for courtesy. 
 
 He had dismounted, and was leading his 
 horse up the rather steep slope. She stood 
 waiting for him, a light rather than a smile 
 upon her noble face, a light like the glow of 
 a far horizon. . . . 
 
MARXQUITA 
 
 105 
 
 “ I thought,” she said, when he had come 
 up, “ that you had gone to Maxwell.” 
 
 “ No, I went to Denver this time,” he 
 told her, “ beyond Denver a little. Where 
 do you think I heard Mass yesterday — this 
 morning again too? for both of us, since you 
 could not come.” 
 
 “ Not at Loretto!” 
 
 But she knew it was at Loretto. His smile 
 told her. 
 
 “ Yes, at Loretto. It was the same to me 
 which place I went to. No, not the same. 
 For I wanted to see the place where you had 
 been a little girl, so that I could come back 
 and bring you word of it.” 
 
 “ Ah! how kind you are!” she said, with 
 a sort of wonder of gratefulness shining on 
 her. 
 
 (“ She is far more beautiful than I ever 
 knew,” he thought.) 
 
 “Not kind at all,” Gore protested. “Just 
 to please myself ! There’s no great kindness 
 in that except to myself.” 
 
 ‘ ‘ Oh yes ! for you knew how it would 
 please me. It was wonderful that you 
 should be so kind as to think of it.” 
 
 “ It gave me pleasure any way. To be in 
 
106 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 the place where you had been so happy ” 
 
 “ Ah, but I am always happy,” she inter- 
 rupted. “Though indeed I was happy there, 
 and sorrowful to leave it. But I did not leave 
 it quite behind : it came with me.” 
 
 “ I have a great many things to tell you. 
 They remember you most faithfully. If my 
 going gave me pleasure it gave them much 
 more. You cannot think how much they 
 made of me for your sake : I stayed there a 
 long time after Mass yesterday, and they 
 made me go back in the afternoon — I was 
 there all afternoon. And all the time we were 
 talking of you.” 
 
 “ Then I think,” Mariquita declared, 
 laughing merrily, “ your talk will have been 
 monotonous.” 
 
 “ Oh, not montonous at all. Are they not 
 dear women? They showed me where you 
 sat in chapel — and the different places where 
 you had sat in class-rooms, and in the 
 refectory, when you first came, as a small 
 girl of ten, and as you rose in the school.” 
 
 “ I did not rise very high. I was never one 
 
 of the clever ones ” 
 
 “ They kept that to themselves ” 
 
 “ Oh yes ! They would do that. Nuns are 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 107 
 
 so charitable — they would never say that any 
 of the girls was stupid.” 
 
 “ No, they didn’t hint that in the least. 
 Sister Gabriel showed me a drawing of 
 yours.” 
 
 “ What was it?” 
 
 “ She said it was the Grand Canal at 
 Venice. I have never been there ” 
 
 “ Nor I. But I remember doing it. The 
 water wouldn’t come flat. It looked like a blue 
 road running up-hill. Sister Gabriel was very 
 kind, very kind indeed. She used to have 
 hay-fever.” 
 
 “ So she has now. She listened for more 
 than half-an-hour while I told her about 
 you.” 
 
 “ Mr. Gore, I think you will have been 
 inventing things to tell her,” Mariquita pro- 
 tested, laughing again. She kept laughing 
 for happiness and pleasure. 
 
 “Oh, no! On the contrary I kept for- 
 getting things. Afterwards I remembered 
 some of them, and told her what I had left 
 out. Some I only remembered when it was 
 too late, after I had come away. Sister 
 Marie Madeleine — I hope you remember her 
 
108 MARIQUITA 
 
 too — she asked hundreds of questions about 
 you.” 
 
 “ Oh yes, of course I remember her. She 
 taught me French. And I was stupid about 
 
 it. . . .” 
 
 “ She was very anxious to know if you kept 
 it up. She said you wanted only practice — 
 and vocabulary.” 
 
 “ And idiom, and grammar, and pronunci- 
 ation,” Mariquita insisted, laughing very 
 cheerfully. “Did you tell her there was no 
 one to keep it up with ? ’ ’ 
 
 He told her of many other of the nuns — he 
 had evidently taken trouble to bring her word 
 of them all. And he had asked for news of 
 the girls she had known best, and brought her 
 news of them also. Several were married, 
 two had entered Holy Religion. 
 
 “ Sylvia Markham,” he said, “ You 
 remember her ? She has come back to Loretto 
 to be a nun. She is a novice : she was clothed 
 at Easter. Sister Mary Scholastica she is— the 
 younger children call her Sister Elastic.” 
 
 “ Oh,” cried Mariquita, with her happy 
 laugh, “ how funny it is — to hear you talking 
 of Sylvia. She was harum-scarum. What a 
 
MARIQUITA 109 
 
 noise she used to make too ! How pretty she 
 was!” 
 
 “ Sister Elastic is just as pretty. She sent 
 fifty messages to you. But Nellie Hurst — 
 you remember her?” 
 
 “ Certainly I do. She was champion base- 
 ball. And she acted better than anybody. 
 Oh, and she edited the Magazine, and she 
 kept us all laughing. She was funny ! 
 Geraldine Barnes had a quinsy and it nearly 
 choked her, but Nellie Hurst made her laugh 
 so much that it burst, and she was soon well 
 again . . .” 
 
 “ Well, and where do you think she is 
 now?” 
 
 “Where?” Mariquita asked almost breath- 
 lessly. 
 
 “ In California. At Santa Clara, near San 
 Jose. She is a Carmelite.” 
 
 “ A Carmelite! And she used to say she 
 would write plays (she did write several that 
 were acted at Loretto) and act them herself — 
 on the stage I mean.” 
 
 It took Gore a long time to tell all his 
 budget of news : he had hardly finished before 
 they reached the homestead, towards which 
 the sinking sun had long warned them to be 
 
110 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 moving. And he had presents for her, a 
 rosary (“ brought by Mother General from 
 Rome and blest by the Pope,”) a prayer- 
 book, a lovely Agnus Dei covered with white 
 satin and beautifully embroidered, scapulars, 
 a little bottle of Lourdes water, another of 
 ordinary holy water, and a little hanging stoup 
 to put some of it in, also a statue of Our 
 Lady, and a small framed print of the Holy 
 House of Loretto. 
 
 Mariquita had never owned so many things 
 in her life. 
 
 44 Oh dear!” she said, 44 And I had been 
 long thinking that I was quite forgotten 
 there : I am ashamed. And you — how to 
 thank you ! ’ ’ 
 
 44 But you have been thanking me all the 
 time,” he said, 4 4 ever since I told you where 
 I had been. Every time you laughed you 
 thanked me.” 
 
 They met Ben Sturt, who was lounging 
 about by the gate in the homestead fence ; he 
 had never seen Mariquita with just that light 
 of happiness upon her. 
 
 44 Here,” he said to Gore, 44 let me take 
 the horse, I’ll see to him.” 
 
 He knew that Mariquita would not come 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 111 
 
 to the stables, and he wanted Gore to be free 
 to stay with her to the last moment. 
 
 As he led the horse away he thought to 
 himself : 
 
 “ It has really begun at last.” 
 
 And he loyally wished his friend good luck. 
 
 Within a yard or two of the door they met 
 Don Joaquin. 
 
 “ Father,” she said at once, “ Mr. Gore 
 didn’t go to Maxwell this time. He went all 
 the way to Denver — to Loretto. And see 
 what a lot of presents he has brought me 
 from them.” 
 
 Gore thought she looked adorable as, like a 
 child unused to gifts, she showed her little 
 treasures to the rather grim old prairie dog. 
 
 He looked less grim than usual. It suited 
 him that she should be so pleased. 
 
 “ Well!” he said, “ you’re stocked now. 
 Mr. Gore had a long ride to fetch them.” 
 
 “ Oh yes! Did you ever hear of anybody 
 being so kind?” 
 
 Her father noted shrewdly the new 
 expression of grateful pleasure on her face. 
 It seemed to him that Gore was not so incom- 
 petent as he had been supposing to carry on 
 his campaign. Sarella came out and joined 
 
 <vn COI 
 
 eG E UBUAtt* 
 ' inL MASS. 
 
112 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 them. “What a cunning little pin-cushion!” 
 she exclaimed, “ Isn’t it just sweet?” The 
 Agnus Dei was almost the only one of 
 Mariquita’s new treasures to which she could 
 assign a use. 
 
 “ Oh, and the necklace! Garnets relieved 
 by those crystal blobs are just the very 
 fashion. “ It is a rosary,” Don Joaquin ex- 
 plained in a rather stately tone. It made him 
 uneasy — it must be unlucky — to hear these 
 frivolous eulogies applied to “ holy objects ” 
 with which personally he had never had the 
 familiarity that diminishes awe. 
 
 Mariquita had plenty to do indoors and did 
 not linger. Gore went in also to wash and 
 tidy himself after his immensely long ride. 
 
 Sarella, who of course knew long before 
 this where Mariquita had received her educa- 
 tion, and had been told whence these pious 
 gifts came, smiled as she turned to Don 
 Joaquin. 
 
 “ So Gore rode all the way to Denver this 
 time,” she remarked. 
 
 “ It is beyond Denver. Mariquita was 
 pleased to hear news of her old friends.” 
 
 “ Oh, I daresay ! Gore is not such a fool 
 as he looks.” 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 113 
 
 “ I am not thinking that he looks a fool at 
 all,” said Don Joaquin more stately than ever. 
 
 (“How Spanish!” thought Sarella, “I 
 suppose they’re born solemn.”) 
 
 “ Indeed,” she cheerfully agreed, “ nor do 
 I. He wouldn’t be so handsome if he looked 
 silly. He’s all sense. And he knows his road, 
 short cuts and all.” 
 
 Don Joaquin disliked her mention of 
 Gore’s good looks, as she intended. She 
 had no idea of being snubbed by her elderly 
 suitor. 
 
 “ Mariquita,” he laid down, “ will think 
 more of his good sense than of his appearance. 
 I have not brought her up to consider a 
 gentleman’s looks.” 
 
 Sarella laughed, she was not an easy person 
 to “ down.” 
 
 “ But you didn’t bring me up,” she said, 
 ‘ ‘ and I can tell you that you might have been 
 as wise as Solomon and it wouldn’t have 
 mattered to me if you had been ugly. I’d 
 rather look than listen any day : and I like to 
 have something worth looking at.” 
 
 Her very pretty eyes were turned full on 
 her mature admirer’s face : and he did not 
 dislike their flattery. An elderly man who 
 
 H 
 
114 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 has been very handsome is not often dis- 
 pleased at being told he is worth looking at 
 still. 
 
 “ So do I, Sarellita,” he responded, telling 
 himself (and her) how much pleasure there 
 was in looking at her. 
 
 Stately he could not help being, but his 
 manner had now no stiffness : and in the 
 double diminutive of her name there was 
 almost a tenderness, a nearer approach to 
 tenderness than she could understand. She 
 could understand, however, that he was more 
 lover-like than he had ever been. 
 
 A slight flush of satisfaction (which he took 
 for maiden shyness) was on her face, as she 
 looked up under her half-drooped eye-lids. 
 
 “ Perhaps,” he said in much lower tones 
 than he usually employed, “ perhaps Mr. 
 Gore knows what you call his road better than 
 I. Rut he does not know better the goal he 
 wants to reach.” 
 
 (“Say!” Sarella asked herself, “What’s 
 coming?”) 
 
 Two of the cow-boys were coming — had 
 come in fact. They appeared at that moment 
 round the corner of the house, ready for 
 supper. 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 115 
 
 44 So,” one of them said, with rather loud 
 irritation, evidently concluding a story, 44 my 
 dad married her, and I have a step-ma 
 younger than myself ” 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 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 them- 
 selves : 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 de- 
 parted 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 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 117 
 
 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 under- 
 stand 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 under- 
 stood 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 
 
118 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 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 behoved 
 them to be so, nature made it easier for them. 
 
 Don Joaquin had, after deliberate considera- 
 tion, 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 man- 
 oeuvred 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 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 119 
 
 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 recognise 
 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 sud- 
 denness in the matter. He would have spoken 
 with authoritative plainness to her now, 
 without further delay : but there was a diffi- 
 culty — 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 begin- 
 ning to hope that there was a chance of success 
 — that was all. 
 
 “It is worth the money,” he answered ; 
 
120 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 “ 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 un 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 par- 
 ticularly 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 straight-forwardly. 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 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 121 
 
 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. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 “ 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 prize 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.” 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 128 
 
 “ 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 com- 
 pleteness 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 
 
124 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 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 colour ! ’ ’ 
 
 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 expen- 
 diture 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 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 125 
 
 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 ques- 
 tions, 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 
 
126 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 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 comfort- 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 127 
 
 able 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 trust- 
 worthy ; 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 
 enquired 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 
 
128 
 
 MAEIQUITA 
 
 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.” 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 When her father informed her of his intended 
 marriage Mariquita was much more taken 
 aback than he had foreseen. He had supposed 
 she must have observed more or less what was 
 coming. 
 
 “ Marry Sarella, father ! ” she exclaimed, 
 too thoroughly astonished to weigh her words, 
 “ but you are her uncle 1 ” 
 
 Don Joaquin, who was pale enough 
 ordinarily, reddened angrily. 
 
 “ I am no relation whatever to her,” he 
 protested fiercely. “ How dare you accuse 
 your father of wishing to marry his own niece ? 
 How dare you insult Sarella by supposing she 
 w r ould marry her uncle?” 
 
 It was terrible to Mariquita to see her father 
 so furious. He had never been soft or tender 
 to her, but he had hardly ever shown any 
 i 
 
130 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 anger towards her : and now he looked at 
 
 her as if he disliked her. 
 
 It did astonish her that Sarella should be 
 willing to marry her uncle. Sarella had 
 indeed, as Don Joaquin had not, thought of 
 the difficulty : but she saw that there ap- 
 
 peared to be none to him : no doubt he knew 
 what was the marriage-law among Catholics, 
 and perhaps that was why he was so insistent 
 as to her being one. 
 
 “ I know,” Mariquita said gently, “ that 
 there is no blood relationship between her and 
 you. She is my first-cousin but she is only 
 your niece by marriage. I do not even know 
 what the Church lays down.” 
 
 Her father was still angry with her, but he 
 was startled as well. He did not know any 
 better than herself what the Church laid 
 down. He did know that between him and 
 Sarella there was no real relationship — in 
 the law of nature there was nothing to bar 
 their marriage, and he had acted in perfect 
 good faith. But he did not intend to break 
 the Church’s law again. 
 
 “ If you are ignorant of the Church’s law,” 
 he said severely, “ you should not talk as if 
 you knew it.” 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 131 
 
 She knew she had not so talked, but she 
 made no attempt to excuse herself. 
 
 “ It is,” she said quietly, “ quite easy to 
 find out. The priest at Maxwell would tell 
 you immediately.” 
 
 She saw that her father, though still 
 frowning heavily, was not entirely disregard- 
 ful of her suggestion. 
 
 “ Father,” she went on in a low gentle 
 tone, “ I beg your pardon if, being alto- 
 gether surprised, I spoke suddenly, and 
 seemed disrespectful.” 
 
 “You were very disrespectful,” he said, 
 with stiff resentment. 
 
 Mariquita’s large grave eyes were full of 
 tears, but he did not notice them, and would 
 have been unmoved if he had seen them. It 
 was difficult for her to keep them from over- 
 flowing, and more difficult to go on with what 
 she wished to say. 
 
 “You know,” she said, “ that there are 
 things which the Church does not allow except 
 upon conditions, but does allow on con- 
 ditions ” 
 
 “ What things?” 
 
 “ For instance marriage with a person who 
 is not a Catholic ” 
 
132 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 Don Joaquin received a sudden illumina- 
 tion. Yes ! With a dispensation that would 
 have been dutiful which he had done unduti- 
 fully without one. 
 
 “You think a dispensation can be obtained 
 in — in this case.” 
 
 “ Father,” she answered almost in a 
 whisper, “ I am quite ignorant about it.” 
 
 He had severely reprimanded her for 
 speaking, being ignorant. Now he wanted 
 encouragement and ordered her to speak. 
 
 “ But say what you think,” he said 
 dictatorially. 
 
 “ As there is no real relationship,” she 
 answered, courageously enough after her 
 former snubbing, “ if such a marriage is for- 
 bidden ” (he scowled blackly, but she went 
 on) “ it cannot be so by the law 7 of God, but 
 by the law of the Church. She cannot give 
 anyone permission to disregard God’s law, 
 but she can, I suppose, make exception to her 
 own law 7 . That is w r hat w 7 e call a dispensation. 
 God does not forbid the use of meat on certain 
 days, but she does. If God forbade it she 
 could never give leave for it : but she often 
 gives leave — not only to a certain person, but 
 to a w 7 hole diocese, or a whole country even, 
 
MARIQUITA 188 
 
 for temporary reasons — what we call a 
 dispensation.” 
 
 Don Joaquin had listened carefully. He 
 was much more ignorant of ecclesiastical 
 matters than his daughter. He had never 
 occupied himself with considering the reasons 
 behind ecclesiastical regulations, and much 
 that he heard now came like entirely new 
 knowledge. But he was Spaniard enough to 
 understand logic very readily, and he did 
 understand Mariquita. 
 
 “ So,” he queried eagerly, “ you think that 
 even if such a marriage is against regulation” 
 (he would not say ‘ forbidden ’) “ There 
 might be a dispensation.” 
 
 “ I do not see why there should not.” 
 
 “Of course there is no reason,” he said 
 loftily, adding with ungracious ingratitude, 
 “ and it was extremely out of place for you to 
 look shocked when I told you of my purpose.” 
 Mariquita accepted this further reproof 
 meekly. Don Joaquin was only asserting his 
 dignity that had lain a little in abeyance while 
 he was listening to her explanations. 
 
 “ I shall have to be away all to-morrow,” 
 he said, “on business. I do not wish you to 
 
184 MARIQUITA 
 
 say anything to Sarella till I give you 
 permission.” 
 
 “ Of course not.” 
 
 Don Joaquin was not addicted to telling 
 fibs — except business ones : in selling a horse 
 he regarded them as merely the floral 
 ornaments of a bargain, which would have an 
 almost indecent nakedness without them. 
 But on this occasion he stooped to a moderate 
 prevarication. 
 
 “ Sarella,” he confidentially informed that 
 lady, “ I shall be up before sunrise and away 
 the whole of to-morrow. Sometime the day 
 after I shall have a good chance of telling 
 Mariquita. Don’t you hint anything to her 
 meanwhile.” 
 
 “ Not I,” Sarella promised. 
 
 (“A hitch somewhere,” she thought, 
 feeling pretty sure that he had spoken to 
 Mariquita already.) 
 
 When Don Joaquin after his return from 
 Maxwell spoke to Mariquita again he once 
 more condescended to some half-truthful- 
 ness — necessary, as he considered, to that 
 great principle of diplomacy — the balance of 
 power. A full and plain explanation of the 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 135 
 
 exact position would, he thought, unduly 
 exalt his daughter’s wisdom and foresight at 
 the expense of his own. 
 
 “ The priest,” he informed her, “ will, of 
 course, be very pleased to marry Sarella and 
 myself when we are ready. That will not be 
 until she has been instructed and baptized. 
 It will not be for a month or two.” 
 
 Mariquita offered her respectful congratula- 
 tions both on Sarella’s willingness to become 
 a Catholic, and on the marriage itself. She 
 was little given to asking questions and was 
 quite aware that her father had no wish to 
 answer any in the present instance. 
 
 Neither did he tell Sarella that a dispensa- 
 tion would be necessary, still less that the 
 priest believed the dispensation would have to 
 be sought, through the Bishop of course, from 
 the Papal Delegate, and professed himself 
 even uncertain whether the Papal Delegate 
 himself might not refer to Rome before 
 granting it, though he (the priest) thought it 
 more probable that His Excellency would 
 grant the dispensation without such reference. 
 
 Don Joaquin merely gave Sarella to under- 
 stand that their marriage would follow her 
 
18 C 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 reception into the Church, and that the 
 necessary instruction previous to that recep- 
 tion would take some time. 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 As the marriage could not take place without 
 delay Don Joaquin did not wish it to be un- 
 reservedly announced : the general inhabitants 
 of the range might guess what they chose, but 
 they were not at present to be informed. 
 
 “ Mariquita may tell Gore,” he explained 
 to Sarella, “that is a family matter.” 
 
 “ And I am sure she will not tell him unless 
 you order her to,” said Sarella, “ she does not 
 think of him in that light.” 
 
 “ What light?” demanded Don Joaquin 
 irritably. 
 
 “ As one of the family,” Sarella replied 
 without any irritation at all. Her placidity 
 of temper was likely to be one of her most 
 convenient endowments. 
 
 “ I shall give her to understand,” said Don 
 Joaquin, “ that there is no restriction on her 
 informing Mr. Gore.” 
 
 Sarella shrugged her pretty shoulders and 
 made no comment. 
 
138 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 Mariquita took her father’s intimation as an 
 order and obeyed, though surprised that he 
 should not, if he desired Mr. Gore to know 
 of his approaching marriage, tell him himself. 
 Possibly, she thought, her father was a little 
 shy about such a subject. 
 
 Mr. Gore received her announcement quite 
 coolly, without any manifestation of surprise. 
 It had not, as Don Joaquin had hoped it 
 might, the least effect of hurrying his own 
 steps. 
 
 “ Am I,” he enquired, “ supposed to show 
 that I have been told ? ’ ’ 
 
 “ Oh, I think so.” 
 
 So that night when they were alone, after 
 the others had gone to their rooms, Gore con- 
 gratulated his host. 
 
 “ Thank you! You see,” said Don 
 Joaquin, assuming a tone of pathos that sat 
 most queerly on him, “ as time goes on I 
 should be very lonely.” 
 
 He shook his head sadly, and Gore 
 endeavoured to look duly sympathetic. 
 
 “Sarella,” the older man proceeded, “could 
 not stop here — if she were not my wife — after 
 Mariquita had left us.” 
 
 Gore, who perfectly understood Mariquita’s 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 139 
 
 father and his diplomacy, would not indulge 
 him by asking if his daughter were, then, 
 likely to leave him. 
 
 So Don Joaquin sighed and had to go on. 
 
 “Yes ! It would be very lonely for me, 
 dependent as I am for society on Mariquita.” 
 
 Here Gore with some inward amusement, 
 could not refrain from accusing his possible 
 father-in-law of some hypocrisy : for he was 
 sure the elderly gentleman would miss his 
 daughter as little as any father could miss his 
 child. 
 
 “ Certainly,” he said aloud, “ it is hard to 
 think how the range would get on without 
 her.” 
 
 No doubt her absence would he hard to fill 
 in the matter of usefulness : and Gore was 
 inclined to doubt whether Sarella would even 
 wish to fill it. He was pretty sure that that 
 young woman would refuse to work as her 
 cousin had worked. 
 
 “ It must get on without her,” Don 
 Joaquin agreed, not without doubt, “ when 
 her time comes for moving to a home of her 
 own.” 
 
 Still Gore refused to “ rise.” 
 
 “We must be prepared for that,” Mari- 
 
140 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 quita’s father went on, refilling his pipe, 
 “ She is grown-up. It is natural she should 
 be thinking of her own future — ” 
 
 Gore suddenly felt angry with him, instead 
 of being merely amused. To him it appeared 
 a profanation of the very idea of Mariquita to 
 speak of her as indulging in surmises and 
 calculations concerning her own matrimonial 
 chances. 
 
 “ It would not,” he said, “ be unnatural — 
 but I am sure her mind is given to no such 
 thoughts.” 
 
 Don Joaquin slightly elevated his eyebrows. 
 
 “ I do not know,” he said coldly, “ how 
 you can answer for what her mind is given to. 
 I, at any rate, must have such thoughts on her 
 account. I am not English. English parents 
 may perhaps leave all such things to chance. 
 We, of my people, are not so. To us it seems 
 the most important of his duties for a father 
 to trust to no chances, but arrange and provide 
 for his daughter’s settlement in life.” 
 
 Here the old fellow paused, and having 
 shot his bolt, pretended it had been a mere 
 parenthesis in answer to an implied criticism. 
 
 “ But,” he continued, “ I have wandered 
 from what I was really explaining. I was 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 141 
 
 telling that soon I should, in the natural course 
 of things, be left here alone, as regards home 
 companionship, unless I myself tried to find a 
 mate : so I tried and I have succeeded.” 
 
 Here he bowed with great majesty and 
 some complacence, as if he might have added, 
 “ Though you, in your raw youthfulness and 
 conceit, may have thought me too old a suitor 
 to win a lovely bride.” 
 
 Gore responded by the heartiest felicita- 
 tions: “ Sir,” he added after a brief pause, 
 “ since it seems to me that you wish it I will 
 explain my own position. I can well afford to 
 marry, and I would wish very much to marry. 
 But there is only one lady whom I have ever 
 met whom I have now, or ever, felt that I 
 would greatly desire to win for my wife.” 
 
 So far Don Joaquin had listened with an 
 absolutely expressionless countenance of 
 polite attention, though he had never been 
 more interested. 
 
 “The lady,” Gore continued, “ i9 your 
 daughter.” 
 
 (Here that lady’s father relaxed the aloof- 
 ness of his manner, and permitted himself a 
 look of benign, though not eager, approval). 
 “ It may be,” the young man went on, 
 
142 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 “ that you have perceived my wishes . . .” 
 
 (Don Joaquin would express neither 
 negation nor assent.) 
 
 “ Anyway, you know them now. But your 
 daughter does not know them. To thrust the 
 knowledge of them prematurely upon her 
 would, I am sure, make the chance of her 
 responding to them very much less hopeful. 
 Therefore I have been slow and cautious in 
 endeavouring to gain even a special footing of 
 friendship with her. I have, lately, gained a 
 little. I cannot flatter myself that it is more 
 than a little : between us there is on her side 
 only the mere dawn of friendship. That 
 being so I should have been unwilling to 
 speak to yourself — lest it should seem like 
 assuming that she had any sort of interest in 
 me beyond what I have explained. I speak 
 now because you clearly expect that I should. 
 Well, I have spoken. But I am so greatly in 
 eager earnest about this that I ask you plainly 
 to allow me to endeavour to proceed with 
 what, I think, you almost resent as a timidity 
 of caution. It is my only chance.” 
 
 Don Joaquin did not see that at all. If he 
 were to inform Mariquita that Mr. Gore 
 wished to become her husband, and he, her 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 143 
 
 father, wished her to become Mr. Gore’s wife, 
 he could not bring himself to picture such 
 disobedience as any refusal on her part would 
 amount to. 
 
 44 Our way,” he said, 44 is more direct than 
 your fanciful English way : it regards not a 
 young girl’s fanciful delays, and timid uncer- 
 tainty, but her solid welfare, and therefore her 
 solid happiness. In reality it gets over her 
 maiden modesty in the best way — by wise 
 authority. She does not have to tell herself 
 baldly 4 I have become in love with this young 
 man,’ but 4 My parents have found this young 
 man worthy to undertake the charge of my 
 life and my happiness : and I submit to their 
 experience and wisdom.’ Then duty will 
 teach her love ; a safer teacher than fancy.” 
 
 44 I hope, sir,” said Gore, 44 that you do 
 not yourself propose that method.” 
 
 44 And if I did?” 
 
 44 I would, though more earnestly desirous 
 to win your daughter than I am desirous of 
 anything in this life, tell you that I refuse to 
 win her in that way. It never would win 
 her.” 
 
 4 4 4 Win her ’ ! She is all duty ” 
 
 44 Excuse me ! No duty would command 
 
144 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 her to become my wife if she could only do so 
 with repugnance. If you told her it was her 
 duty I should tell her that it was no such 
 thing.” 
 
 Don Joaquin was amazed at such crass 
 stupidity. He flung his open hands upwards 
 with angry protest. He was even suspicious. 
 Did the young man really want to marry his 
 daughter? It was much more evident that 
 he was in earnest now than it had been to 
 Don Joaquin that he was in earnest before. 
 
 The elderly half-breed had not the least 
 idea of blaming his own crude diplomacy : on 
 the contrary he had been pluming himself on 
 its success. For some time he had desired to 
 obtain from Gore a definite expression of his 
 wish to marry Mariquita and he had obtained 
 it. That it had been speedily followed by this 
 further pronouncement, incomprehensible to 
 the girl’s father, was not his fault, but was due 
 entirely to the Englishman’s peculiarities, 
 peculiarities that to Don Joaquin 9eemed per- 
 verse and almost suspicious. 
 
 “ If you were a Spaniard,” he said stiffly, 
 “ you would be grateful to me for being 
 willing to influence my daughter in your 
 favour.” 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 145 
 
 Gore knew that he must be disturbed, as it 
 was his rule to speak of himself not as a 
 Spaniard but as an American. 
 
 “I am grateful to you, sir, for being willing 
 to let me hope to win your daughter for my 
 wife — most grateful . ’ ’ 
 
 “ You do not appear grateful to me for my 
 willingness to simplify matters.” 
 
 “ They cannot be simplified — nor hurried. 
 If your daughter can be brought to think 
 favourably of me as one who earnestly desires 
 to have the great, great honour and privilege 
 of being the guardian of her life and its 
 happiness, it must be gradually and by very 
 gentle approaches. I hope that she already 
 likes me, but I am sure she does not yet love 
 me.” 
 
 “Before she has been asked to be your wife ! 
 Love you ! Certainly not. She will love her 
 husband, for that will be her duty.” 
 
 Gore did not feel at all like laughing : his 
 future father-in-law’s peculiarities seemed as 
 perverse to him as his own did to Don 
 Joaquin. He dreaded their operation ; it 
 seemed only too possible that Don Joaquin 
 would be led to interference by them, and 
 such interference he feared extremely ; nor 
 
 K 
 
146 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 could he endure the idea of Mariquita’s being 
 dragooned by her father. 
 
 “If,” he declared stoutly, “ you thrust 
 prematurely upon your daughter the idea of 
 me as her husband you will make her detest 
 the thought of me, and I never shall be her 
 husband.” 
 
 Don Joaquin was offended. 
 
 “I am not used to do anything prematurely,” 
 he said grimly. “ And it may be that I 
 understand my daughter, who is of my own 
 race, better than you who are not of her 
 race.” 
 
 “ It may be. But I am not certain that it 
 is so. Sir, since you have twice alluded to 
 that question of race, you must not be sur- 
 prised or displeased if I remind you that she 
 is as much of my race as of your own. Half 
 Spanish she is, but half of English blood.” 
 
 Don Joaquin was displeased : but all the 
 same he did feel that there might be some- 
 thing in Gore’s argument. He had always 
 thought of Mariquita as Spanish like himself ; 
 but he had never been unconscious that she 
 was unlike himself — it might possibly be by 
 reason of her half-English descent. 
 
 “ The lady,” Gore went on, “ whom you 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 147 
 
 yourself are marrying would perhaps under- 
 stand me better than you appear to do.” 
 
 This reference to Sarella did not greatly 
 conciliate her betrothed. He did not wish 
 her to be occupied in understanding any 
 young man. All the same he was slightly 
 flattered at Gore’s having, apparently, a 
 confidence in her judgment. Moreover he 
 knew that it was so late that this discussion 
 could not be protracted much longer, and he 
 was not willing to say anything like an 
 admission that he had receded (which he had 
 not) from his own opinion. 
 
 “Her judgment,” he said, “is good. And 
 she has a maternal interest in Mariquita. I 
 I will tell her what you have said.” 
 
 Gore went to bed smiling to himself at the 
 idea of Sarella ’s maternal interest. She did 
 not strike him as a motherly young lady. 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 Sarella found considerable enjoyment in the 
 visits to Maxwell necessitated by her period 
 of instruction. Each instruction was of 
 reasonable length and left plenty of time for 
 other affairs : and that time landed Don 
 Joaquin in expenses he had been far from 
 foreseeing. Sarella had a fund of mild 
 obstinacy which her placidity of temper partly 
 veiled. She intended that considerable 
 additions to the furniture of the homestead 
 should be made, and she did not intend to get 
 married without some considerable additions 
 to her wardrobe as well. Her dresses, she 
 assured Don Joaquin, were all too youthful. 
 “Girls’ clothes” she called them. She 
 insisted on the necessity of now dressing as a 
 matron. “ Perhaps,” she admitted with 
 sweet ingenuousness, “ I have dressed too 
 young. One gets into a sort of groove. 
 There was nothing to remind me that I had 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 149 
 
 passed beyond the stage of school -girl frocks. 
 But a married woman, unless she is a silly, 
 must pull herself up, and adopt a matron’s 
 style : I would rather now dress a bit too old 
 than too young. You don’t want people to 
 be saying you have married a flapper!” 
 
 She got her own way, and Don Joaquin, 
 had he known anything about it, might have 
 discovered that matronly garments were more 
 expensive than a girl’s. “ A girl,” Sarella 
 informed Mariquita, “ need only be smart. 
 A matron’s dress must be handsome.” 
 
 To do her justice Sarella tried to convince 
 her lover that Mariquita also should be pro- 
 vided with new clothes : but he would agree 
 only to one new “ suit,” as he called it, for 
 his daughter to wear at his wedding. He had 
 no idea of spending his own money on an 
 extensive outfit “ for another man’s wife.” 
 That expense would be Gore’s. Even in 
 Sarella ’s case he would never have agreed to 
 buy all she wanted had it been announced at 
 once: but she was far too astute for any such 
 mistake as that. It appeared that there must 
 be some delay before their marriage and she 
 utilized it by spreading her gradual demands 
 over as long a time as she could. 
 
150 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 Some of the expense, too, Don Joaquin 
 managed to reduce by discovering a market 
 he had hardly thought of till now for the furs 
 of animals he had himself shot : some of these 
 animals were rather uncommon, some even 
 rare, and he became aware of their commercial 
 value only when bargaining for their making 
 up into coats or cloaks for Sarella. His 
 subsequent visits to this “ store ” in order to 
 dispose of similar furs against a reduction in 
 its charges for Sarella’s clothing he studiously 
 concealed from her : but Sarella knew all 
 about it. 
 
 “ Why,” she said to herself, really 
 admiring his sharpness, “ the old boy is 
 making a profit on the bargain. He’s getting 
 more for his furs than he’s spending.” 
 
 She was careful not to let him guess that 
 she knew this ; but she promised herself to 
 “ take it out in furniture.” And she kept her 
 promise. It was Sarella’s principle that a 
 person who did not keep promises made to 
 herself would never keep those made to other 
 people. 
 
 “You really must,” she told him “ have 
 some of those furs made into a handsome 
 winter jacket for Mariquita. They cost you 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 151 
 
 nothing, and she must have a winter jacket. 
 The one she has was got at the convent — 
 and a present too, I believe. It was hand- 
 some once — and that shows how economical 
 good clothes are : they last so ” 
 
 (Don Joaquin thought “ especially econ- 
 omical when they are presents.’) 
 
 “ — But Mariquita has grown out of it. 
 She is so tall. A new one made of cloth 
 from the store would cost more than one for 
 me, because she is so tall. But those furs cost 
 you nothing.” 
 
 She knew he would not say “No, but I 
 can sell them.” 
 
 “ Besides,” she added, “ if you offered 
 them some more furs at the store they might 
 take something off the charge of making and 
 lining. It is often done. I’ll ask them about 
 it if you like.” 
 
 Don Joaquin did not at all desire her to do 
 that. 
 
 “No necessity,” he said hastily, “ Mari- 
 quita shall have the jacket. I will take the 
 furs and give the order myself.” 
 
 “ Only be sure to insist that the lining is 
 silk. They have some silvery gray silk that 
 would just go with those furs. And Mariquita 
 
152 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 would pay for good dressing. Her style 
 wants it. She’s solid, you know.” 
 
 Mariquita did get the jacket. But it was 
 not of the fur Sarella had meant — her father 
 knew by that time the value of that sort of 
 fur. And Sarella knew that she had made it 
 quite clear which sort she had asked him to 
 supply. She was amused by his craftiness, 
 anl though a little ashamed of him she was 
 readier to forgive his stinginess than if it had 
 been illustrated in a garment for herself. 
 After all it was perhaps as well that 
 Mariquita’s should not be so valuable as her 
 own. 
 
 “And married women,” she reminded her- 
 self, “ do have to dress handsomer than girls, 
 and Mariquita will never know the differ- 
 ence.” 
 
 “ I suggested,” she told her cousin, “ the 
 same gray fur as mine. But I daresay a 
 brown fur will suit your colouring better : 
 and it’s younger. Anything gray (in the fur 
 line) can be worn with mourning : and 
 
 nothing’s so elderly as mourning.” 
 
 It was the first present her father had ever 
 given Mariquita, and she thanked him with a 
 warmth of gratefulness that ought to have 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 153 
 
 made him ashamed. But Don Joaquin was 
 not subject to the unpleasant consciousness 
 of shame. On the contrary he thought with 
 less complacence of Mariquita’s thanks than 
 of the fact that he had given her a necessary 
 winter garment at a profit — for he had taken 
 the other furs to the store and received for 
 them a substantial cash payment over and 
 above the clearing of the charges for making 
 up and lining the commoner skins of which the 
 winter-jacket was made. 
 
 “ I wonder,” thought Sarella, “ what that 
 lining is? It looks silky, but I’m sure it isn’t 
 silk. I daresay it’s warmer. And after all 
 Gore can get it changed for silk when it’s 
 worn out : the fur will outlast two linings at 
 least. It’s not so delicate as mine. I’m afraid 
 mine’ll flatten: I must look to that.” 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 Meanwhile the instructions did proceed, and 
 Sarella did not mind them much. Perhaps 
 she was not always attending very laboriously 
 — she had a good deal to think of : but she 
 
 listened with all due docility, and with quite 
 reasonable, if not absorbed, interest : and by 
 carefully abstaining from asking questions did 
 not often betray any misunderstanding of the 
 nun’s explanations. For it was by one of the 
 nuns that all but the preliminary instructions 
 were given. Sarella rather liked her, deciding 
 that she was “ a good sort,” and, though 
 neither young nor extremely attractive, she 
 was “ as kind as kind,” and so intensely full 
 of her subject that Sarella could not help 
 gathering a higher appreciation of its 
 importance. In Sarella the earnest expounder 
 of Catholic doctrine and practice had no 
 bigotry and not much prejudice to work 
 against; only a thick crust of ignorance, and 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 155 
 
 perhaps a thicker layer of natural indifference. 
 The little she had heard about the Catholic 
 Church was from puritan neighbours in a very 
 small town of a remote corner of New England, 
 and if it had made any particular impression 
 must have been found unfavourable : but 
 Sarella had been too little interested in 
 religion to adopt its rancours, her whole dis- 
 position, easy, self-indulgent and material, 
 being opposed to rancour as to all rough, 
 sharp, and uncomfortable things. 
 
 Perhaps the nun was hardly likely to over- 
 come the indifference : and perhaps she 
 
 knew it. But she prayed for Sarella much 
 oftener than she talked to her, and had much 
 more confidence in what Our Lord Himself 
 might do for her than in anything that she 
 could. 
 
 “ After all,” she would urge, “ it is more 
 your own business than mine. I did not make 
 her, nor die for her. Master, do your own 
 work that I cannot.” 
 
 Besides she, who had no belief in chance, 
 would cheer herself by remembering that ITe 
 had so ordered His patient providence as to 
 bring the girl to the gate of the church, by 
 such ways as she was so far capable of. He 
 
156 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 had begun the work, He would not half do it. 
 He would make it, the nun trusted, a double 
 work. For in, half-obstinately, insisting that 
 Sarella must become a Catholic before he 
 married her, the old Spaniard, half-heathen 
 by life-long habit, had begun to awake to 
 some sort at least of Catholic feeling, some 
 beginning of Catholic practice, for now he 
 was occasionally hearing Mass, and that first 
 lethargic movement of a better spirit in him 
 might, with God’s blessing, would, lead to 
 something more genuinely spiritual. 
 
 The nun attributed those beginnings to the 
 prayers of the old half-breed’s daughter. As 
 yet she knew her but little, but already, by 
 the discretio spirituum, which is after all per- 
 haps only another name for the clear instinct 
 in things of grace earned by those who live by 
 grace, the elderly nun, plain and simple, 
 recognised in Mariquita one of a rare, un- 
 fettered spirituality. 
 
 Sarella had not, at all events consciously, to 
 herself, told her instructress much about her 
 young cousin. 
 
 “ Oh, Mariquita!” she had said, not ill- 
 naturedly, but a little hold-cheaply , 44 she 
 lives up in the moon.” 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 157 
 
 (“Higher up than that, I expect,” thought 
 Sister Aquinas, gathering the impression that 
 Mariquita was not held of much account in 
 the family.) 
 
 “ But she is not an idler?” said the nun. 
 
 “ Oh not a bit,” Sarella agreed with per- 
 fectly ungrudging honesty. “An idler! No, 
 she works a lot harder than she ought : harder 
 than she would if I had the arranging of 
 things. Not quite so hard as she used, 
 though : for I have made her father get some 
 help : and he will have to get more if Mariquita 
 leaves us.” 
 
 Perceiving that the nun did not smile, but 
 retreated into what Sarella called her “ inside 
 expression,” that acute young woman guessed 
 that she might have conveyed the idea that 
 her future step-daughter was to be sent away 
 on her father’s marriage. 
 
 “There’s always,” she explained carelessly, 
 “ the chance of her marrying. She is hand- 
 some in her own way, and I don’t think she 
 need remain long unmarried if she chose to 
 marry. Not that she ever thinks of it.” 
 
 (“I expect not,” thought Sister Aquinas.) 
 
 This was about as near to gossip as they 
 ever got. Sarella, indeed, would have liked 
 
158 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 the nun better if she had been “more chatty.” 
 I don’t know that Sister Aquinas really 
 disliked chat so long as it wasn’t gossip : but 
 the truth was she did not find the time allowed 
 for each instruction at all superfluously long, 
 and did not wish to let it slip away in mere 
 talk. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 It was only occasionally that Mariquita ac- 
 companied Sarella when the latter went to 
 the convent for instruction. On one of those 
 occasions the Loretto Convent near Denver 
 was mentioned, and Sister Aquinas said, 
 
 “ I had a niece there a few years ago — 
 Eleanor Hurst. I wonder if you know her?” 
 “Oh yes! Quite well.” Mariquita 
 answered with the sort of shining interest 
 that always made her look suddenly 
 younger. “ A friend of ours brought me 
 news, lately, that she has become a Carmelite.” 
 “ What is a Carmelite?” Sarella asked. 
 
 “ A nun of one of the great Contemplative 
 Orders,” Sister Aquinas explained, turning 
 politely to Sarella. “It is a much rarer 
 vocation than that of “ active ” nuns, like 
 ourselves. Carmelites do not teach school, or 
 have orphanages, or homes for broken old 
 
160 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 men or women, nor nurse the sick, either in 
 their homes or in hospital.” 
 
 “ Sounds pretty useless,” Sarella remarked 
 carelessly, “ what do they do anyway?” 
 “They are not at all useless,” the nun 
 answered, smiling good-humouredly. “Married 
 women are not useless, though they do not do 
 any of those things either.” 
 
 “ Of course not. But they are married. 
 
 They make their husbands comfortable ” 
 
 The nun could not help taking her own 
 turn of interrupting, and said with a little 
 laugh. 
 
 “ Not quite always, perhaps.” 
 
 “ The good ones do.” 
 
 “Perhaps not invariably. Some even pious 
 women are not remarkable for making their 
 husbands comfortable . ’ ’ 
 
 Sarella laughed, and the elderly nun went 
 on. 
 
 “ Of course it is the vocation of married 
 women to do as you say. And I hope most do 
 it, that and setting the example of happy 
 Christian homes. I do not really mean to 
 judge of the vocation by those who fail to 
 fulfil it. It is God’s vocation for the vast 
 majority of His daughters. But not for all.” 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 161 
 
 “ There aren’t husbands enough for all of 
 us,” Sarella, who was “ practical ” and 
 slightly statistical, remarked with the com- 
 placence of one for whom a husband had been 
 forthcoming. 
 
 “ Exactly,” agreed the elderly nun, 
 laughing cheerfully, “so it’s a good thing, 
 you see, that there are other vocations : ours 
 for instance.” 
 
 “ Oh,” Sarella protested with hasty polite- 
 ness, “ no one could think people like you 
 useless. You do so much good.” 
 
 “ So do the Carmelites. Only their way 
 of it is not quite the same. Would you say 
 that Shakespeare was useless, or Dante?” 
 
 To tell truth Sarella had never in her life 
 said anything about either, or thought any- 
 thing. Nevertheless she was aware that they 
 were considered important. 
 
 “ They did not,” the nun said eagerly, 
 “ teach schools, or nurse the sick, or do any 
 of those things for the sake of which some 
 people kindly forgive us for being nuns — not 
 all people, unfortunately. Yet they are 
 recognised as not having been useless. They 
 are not useless now, long after they are dead. 
 Mankind admits its debt to them. They 
 
 L 
 
162 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 served, and they serve still. Not with 
 physical service, like nurses, or doctors, 
 or cooks, or house-servants. But they 
 contributed to the quality of the human 
 race. So have many great men and women 
 who never wrote a line — Joan of Arc for 
 instance. The contribution of those illustri- 
 ous servants was eminent and famous : but 
 many who have never been famous, who 
 never have been known, have contributed in 
 a different degree or fashion to the quality of 
 mankind : innumerable priests unknown per- 
 haps outside their parishes, innumerable 
 nuns, innumerable wives and mothers ; and a 
 Carmelite nun so contributes, eminently, 
 immeasurably except by God, though invis- 
 ibly, and inaudibly. Not only by her prayers, 
 I mean her prayers of intercession, though 
 again it is only God who can measure what 
 she does by them. But just by being what 
 she is, vast, unknown, numbers of people are 
 brought into the Catholic Church not only by 
 her prayers but by her life. Some read them- 
 selves into the true faith, into any faith ; they 
 are very few in comparison of those who come 
 to believe. Some are preached into the 
 Church — a few only, again, compared with 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 168 
 
 the number of those who do come to her. 
 What brings most of those who are brought? 
 I believe it is a certain quality that they have 
 become aware of in the Catholic Church that 
 brings the immense majority. The young 
 man in the factory, or in the army, in a ship, 
 or on a ranch — anywhere — falls into com- 
 panionship with a Catholic, or with a group 
 of Catholics : and in him, or them, he 
 
 gradually perceives this quality which he has 
 never perceived elsewhere. It may be that 
 the Catholics he has come to know are not 
 perfect at all. The quality is not all of their 
 own earning : it is partly an inheritance : 
 some of it from their mothers, some from their 
 sisters, some from their friends : ever so much 
 of it from the saints, who contributed it to 
 the air of the church that Catholics breathe. 
 The Contemplatives are contributing it every 
 day, and all day long. Each, in her case, 
 behind her grille, is forever giving something 
 immeasurable, except by God, to the trans- 
 cendent quality of the Catholic Church. This 
 may be, and mostly is, unsuspected by almost 
 all her fellow-creatures : but not unfelt by 
 quite all. A Carmelite’s convent is mostly in 
 a great city : countless human beings pass its 
 
164 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 walls. They cannot help, seeing them, saying 
 to their own hearts, “ In there human 
 creatures, like me, are living unlike me. 
 They have given up everything — and for no 
 possible reward here. Ambition cannot 
 account for any part of it even. They cannot 
 become anything great even in their Church : 
 nor famous ; they will die as little known or 
 regarded as they live. They can win no 
 popularity. They obtain no applause. They 
 are called useless for their pains. They are 
 scolded for doing what they do, though they 
 would not be scolded if they were mere old- 
 maids who pampered and indulged only them- 
 selves. The wicked women of this city are less 
 decried than they. They are abused, and they 
 have to be content to be abused, remember- 
 ing that their Master said they must be con- 
 tent to fare no better than Himself. It is 
 something above this world, that can only be 
 accounted for by another world, and such a 
 belief in it as is not proved by those who may 
 try to grab two worlds, this one with their 
 right hand, the next with their left. The 
 life almost all of us declare impossible here on 
 earth they are living.” Such thoughts as 
 these, broken thoughts, hit full in the face 
 
MARXQUITA 
 
 165 
 
 numbers of passers-by every day, and how 
 many days are there not in a year — in a 
 Carmelite’s own lifetime. They are witnesses 
 to J esus Christ who cannot be explained 
 away. A chaplain told me that nothing 
 pleased his soldiers so much as to get him in 
 the midst of a group of them and say, “ Tell 
 us about the nuns, Father. Tell us about the 
 
 Carmelites and the Poor Clares ” 
 
 “ I knew a girl called Clare,” Sarella com- 
 mented brightly, “she was as poor as a church 
 mouse, but she married a widower with no 
 children and a huge fortune. I beg your 
 pardon — but the name reminded me of her.” 
 Sister Aquinas laughed gently. 
 
 “ Well, she was a useful friend to you !” 
 
 “ Not at all. She never did a hand’s turn 
 for anyone. I don’t know what she would 
 have done if she hadn’t married a rich man, she 
 was so helpless. But you were saying?” 
 
 “ Only that his soldiers loved to hear the 
 chaplain tell them about the Contemplative 
 nuns. Nothing interested them more. I am 
 sure it was not thrown away on them. It was 
 like showing them a high and lovely place. I 
 should think no one can look at a splendid 
 
166 MARIQUITA 
 
 white mountain and not want to be climbing. 
 That was all.” 
 
 Would Sarella ever want to climb? Neither 
 did Sister Aquinas know, nor do I know. 
 
 Her eagerness had been, perhaps, partly 
 spurred by other criticism than Sarella ’s : 
 Sarella was not the only one who had told 
 Nelly Hurst’s aunt that it w r as a pity the girl 
 had “ decided on one of the useless orders.” 
 
 That every phase of life approved by the 
 Catholic Church, as the Contemplative orders 
 are, must be useful, Sister Aquinas knew 
 well, and it wounded her to hear her niece’s 
 high choice belittled. She could not help 
 knowing that this belittling was simply a 
 naive confession of materialism, and an 
 equally naive expression of human selfishness. 
 We approve the vocation of nuns whose 
 work is for our own bodies : we cannot easily 
 see the splendour of direct service of God 
 Himself who has no material needs of His 
 own. That God’s most usual course of Pro- 
 vidence calls us to serve Him by serving our 
 fellows we see clearly enough, because it suits 
 us to see it : but we are too purblind to per- 
 ceive that even that service need not in every 
 case be material service : and it scandalizes us 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 167 
 
 to remember that God chooses in some 
 instances to be served directly, not by the 
 service of any creature, because the instances 
 are less common we are shocked when asked 
 to admit that they exist. If Christ were still 
 visibly on earth millions would be delighted to 
 feed Him, but it would annoy almost all of us 
 to see even a few serving Him by sitting idle 
 at His feet listening. Hardly any of us but 
 think Martha was doing more that afternoon 
 at Bethany than her sister, and it troubles us 
 that Jesus Christ thought differently. It was 
 so easy to sit still and listen — that is why the 
 huge majority of us find it impossible, and 
 are angry that here and there a contemplative 
 nun wants to do it. 
 
 Of liberty we prattle in every language ; 
 and most loudly do they scream of it who are 
 most angry that God takes leave to exist, and 
 that many of His creatures still refuse to deny 
 His existence ; that many admit His right to 
 command, and their own obligation to obey. 
 These liberty-brawlers would be the first to 
 concede to every woman the ‘ inalienable 
 right ’ to lead a corrupt life, destructive of 
 society, and the law to allow to a handful of 
 women out of the world’s population the 
 
168 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 right to live a life of spotless whiteness at the 
 immediate feet of the Master they love. 
 
 Was Sister Aquinas so carried away as to 
 be forgetful that Sarella was not the only 
 auditor? Mariquita had listened too. 
 
CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 During these weeks of Sarella’s instruction 
 she achieved something which to her seemed a 
 greater triumph than her succession of 
 cumulative triumphs in the matters of 
 trousseau and of furniture. She persuaded 
 Don Joaquin to buy a motor-car ! 
 
 She would not have succeeded in this 
 attempt but for certain circumstances which 
 in reality robbed her success of some of its 
 triumph. In the first place the machine was 
 not a new one : in the second Don Joaquin 
 took it instead of a debt which he did not 
 think likely to be paid. Then also he had 
 arrived at the conclusion that so many long 
 rides as Sarella’s frequent journeys to 
 Maxwell involved were likely to prove costly. 
 They took a good deal out of the horses, even 
 without accidents occurring, and an accident 
 had nearly occurred which would have very 
 largely reduced the value of one of the best 
 
170 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 of his horses — the one, as it happened, best 
 fitted for carrying a lady. Sarella all but let 
 the horse down on a piece of ragged, stony 
 road : Don Joaquin being himself at her elbow, 
 and watchful, had just succeeded in averting 
 the accident : but, lover as he was, he was 
 able to see that Sarella would never be a 
 horse-woman. She disliked riding, and he 
 was not such a tyrant as to insist on her doing 
 a thing she never would do well, and had no 
 pleasure in doing. On the whole he made up 
 his mind that it would be more economical to 
 take this second-hand car in settlement of a 
 bad debt than continue running frequent risks 
 of injury to his horses. 
 
 The acquisition of the car made it possible 
 to shorten the period of these journeys to 
 Maxwell : it did not require a night’s rest, 
 and the trip itself was much more rapidly 
 accomplished. 
 
 The period of Sarella ’s instruction was not 
 one of idleness on Gore’s part in reference to 
 Mariquita. It seemed to him that he really 
 was making some advance. He saw much 
 more of her than used to be the case. She 
 was now accustomed to chance meetings with 
 him, or what she took for chance meetings, 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 171 
 
 and did not make hasty escape from them, or 
 treat him during them with reserve. They 
 were in fact friends and almost confidential 
 friends : but if Gore had continued as wise as 
 he had been when discussing the situation 
 with her father he would have been able to see 
 that it did not amount to more than that : 
 that they were friends indeed because 
 Mariquita was wholly free from any suspicion 
 that more than that could come of it. She 
 had simply come to a settled opinion that he 
 was nice, a kind man, immensely pleasanter 
 as a companion than any man she had known 
 before, a trustworthy friend who could tell her 
 of much whereof she had been ignorant. She 
 began in a fashion to know “his people,” 
 too ; and he saw with extreme pleasure that 
 she was interested in them. That was natural 
 enough. She knew almost nobody : as a 
 grown up woman she had really known none of 
 her own sex till Sarella came : it would have 
 been strange if she had not heard with interest 
 about women whose portraits were so affec- 
 tionately drawn for her, who, she could easily 
 discern, were pleasant and refined, cheerful, 
 bright, amusing, and kind too; cordial, 
 friendly people. 
 
172 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 All the same Gore’s talk of his family did 
 connote a great advance in intimacy with 
 Mariquita. He seemed to assume that she 
 might know them herself : and she gathered 
 the notion that when he had bought a range 
 some of them would come out and live with 
 him, so that she said nothing to contradict a 
 possibility that he had after all only implied. 
 Gore, meanwhile, with no suspicion of her idea 
 that his sisters might come out to visit him, 
 and noting with great satisfaction that she 
 never contradicted his hints and hopes that 
 they might all meet, attached more import- 
 ance to it than he ought. Perhaps he built 
 more hope on this than on any one thing 
 besides. He was fully aware that in all their 
 intercourse there was no breath of flirtation. 
 But he could not picture Mariquita flirting, 
 and did not want to picture it. Meanwhile 
 their intercourse was daily growing to an 
 intimacy, or he took it for such. He did not 
 sufficiently weigh the fact that of herself she 
 said little. She was most ready to be inter- 
 ested in all he told her of himself, his previous 
 life, his friends, but of her own real life, 
 which was inward and apart from the few 
 events of her experience, she did not speak. 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 178 
 
 This did not strike him as reserve, for those 
 who show a warm, friendly interest in others 
 do not seem reserved. 
 
 Gore never startled her by gallantry or 
 compliments ; his sympathy and admiration 
 were too respectful for compliment, and a 
 certain instinct warned him that gallantry 
 would have perplexed and disconcerted her. 
 
 None the less he believed that he was 
 making progress, and the course of it was full 
 of beautiful and happy moments. So things 
 went on, with, as Gore thought, sure though 
 not rapid pace. He was too much in earnest 
 to risk haste : and also too happy in the 
 present to make blundering clutches at the 
 future. Then with brutal suddenness Don 
 Joaquin intervened. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 He met his daughter and Gore returning to 
 the homestead, Mariquita’s face bright with 
 friendly interest in all that Gore had been 
 telling her, and the young man’s certainly not 
 less happy. Don Joaquin was out of temper : 
 Sarella and he had had an economic difference 
 and he had been aware that she had deceived 
 him. 
 
 He barely returned Gore’s and Mariquita’s 
 greeting, and his brow was black. It was 
 not till some time later that he and Gore found 
 themselves alone together. Then he said ill- 
 humouredly, 
 
 “You and Mariquita were riding this after- 
 noon — a good while, I think.” 
 
 “ It did not seem long to me, as you can 
 understand,” Gore replied smiling and anxi- 
 ous to ignore the old fellow’s bad temper. 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 175 
 
 “ Perhaps it does not seem long to you 
 since you began to speak of marrying my 
 daughter.” 
 
 “ I did not begin to speak of it. I should 
 have preferred to hold my tongue till I could 
 feel I had some right to speak of it. It was 
 you, sir, who began.” 
 
 “ And that was a long time ago. Have 
 you yet made my daughter understand you?” 
 “ I cannot be sure yet.” 
 
 “ But I must be sure. To-morrow I shall 
 see that she understands.” 
 
 Gore was aghast. 
 
 “ I earnestly beg you to abstain from doing 
 that,” he begged, too anxious to prevent Don 
 Joaquin’s interference to risk precipitating it 
 by showing the anger he felt. 
 
 “Perhaps you no longer wish to marry her. 
 If so it would be advisable to reduce your 
 
 intercourse to common civilities ” 
 
 “ Sir,” Gore interrupted, “ I cannot allow 
 you to go on putting any case founded on 
 such an assumption as that of my no longer 
 wishing to marry your daughter. I wish it 
 more every day . . .” 
 
 The young man had a right to be angry, 
 and he was angry, and perhaps was not 
 
176 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 unwilling to show it. But it was necessary 
 that he should for every reason be moderate in 
 letting his resentment appear. To have a loud 
 quarrel with a prospective father-in-law is 
 seldom a measure likely to help the suitor’s 
 wishes. 
 
 He in his turn was interrupted. 
 
 “ Then,” said Don Joaquin, “it is time 
 you told her so.” 
 
 “ I do not think so. I think it’s not time : 
 and that to tell her so now would greatly 
 injure my chance of success.” 
 
 “ I will answer for your success. I shall 
 myself speak to her. I shall tell her that you 
 wish to marry her, and that I have, some time 
 ago, given my full consent.” 
 
 Gore was well aware that Don Joaquin 
 could not “answer for his success.” It was 
 horrible to him to think of Mariquita being 
 bullied, and he was sure that her father 
 intended to bully her. Anything would be 
 better than that. He was intensely earnest 
 in his wish to succeed ; it was that earnestness 
 that made him willing to be patient : but he 
 was, if possible, even more intensely deter- 
 mined that the poor girl should not be 
 tormented and dragooned by her tyrannical 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 177 
 
 father. That he would risk a great deal to 
 prevent, as far as his own power went. 
 
 “ I most earnestly beg you not to do that,” 
 he said in a very low voice. 
 
 " But I intend to do it. If you choose to 
 say that you do not, after all, wish to marry 
 her then I will merely suggest that you should 
 leave us.” 
 
 “ I have just told you the exact 
 contrary ” 
 
 “Then, I shall tell Mariquita so to-morrow : 
 stating that your proposal meets with my full 
 consent, and that in view of her prolonged 
 intimacy with you her consent is taken by me 
 for granted. I do take it for granted.” 
 
 “ I wish I could. But I cannot. Sir, I 
 still entreat you to abandon this intention of 
 yours.” 
 
 “ Only on condition that you make the 
 proposal yourself without any further delay.” 
 
 From this decision the obstinate old father 
 would not recede. The discussion continued 
 for some time, but he seemed to grow only 
 more fixed in his intention : and certainly he 
 became more acerbated in temper. Gore was 
 sure that if he were allowed to take up the 
 matter with his daughter it would be with 
 
 M 
 
178 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 even more harshly dictatorial tyranny than 
 had seemed probable at first. 
 
 Finally Gore promised that he would him- 
 self propose to Mariquita in form on the 
 morrow. Don Joaquin being with difficulty 
 induced to undertake on his side that he 
 would not “ prepare ” her for what was 
 coming. He gave this promise quite as re- 
 luctantly as Gore gave his. The younger man 
 dreaded the bad effects of precipitancy : the 
 elder, who had plenty of self-conceit behind 
 his dry dignity, relinquished very unwillingly 
 the advantages he counted upon from his 
 diplomacy, and the weight of his authority 
 being known beforehand to be on the suitor’s 
 side. If Gore were really so uncertain of 
 success it would be a feather in the paternal 
 cap to have insured that success by his 
 solemn indications of approval. But he saw 
 that without his promise of absolute absten- 
 tion from interference Gore would not 
 agree to make his proposal : so Don Joaquin 
 ungraciously yielded the point, perhaps chiefly 
 because important business called him away 
 from the morrow’s dawn till late at night. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 After breakfast next morning Sarella, not 
 quite accidentally, found herself alone with 
 Gore. 
 
 “ You gentlemen,” she said, “ did go to 
 bed sometime, I suppose. But I thought you 
 never were going to stop your talk — and to 
 tell you the truth I wished my bedroom was 
 farther away, or had a thicker wall. I go to 
 bed to go to sleep. You were at it two hours 
 and twenty minutes.” 
 
 Gore duly apologized for the postponement 
 of her sleep, and wondered how thin the 
 wooden partition might be between her room 
 and that in which the long discussion had 
 taken place. 
 
 “ These partitions of thin boarding are 
 wretched,” she informed him, “ Especially 
 as they are only stained. If they were even 
 papered it would prevent the tobacco-smoke 
 
180 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 coming through the cracks where the boards 
 have shrunk.” Gore could not help smiling. 
 
 “ I think,” he said, “ you want to let me 
 know that our talk was not quite inaudible.” 
 “ No it wasn’t. Not quite. I’ll tell you 
 how much was audible. That you were 
 talking about Mariquita, and that you were 
 arguing : and I think you were both angry. I 
 am sure he was.” 
 
 “ So was I; though not so loud, I hope.” 
 “ Look here, Mr. Gore. You weren’t 
 loud at all. But I knew you were angry. 
 And so you ought to have been. Why on 
 earth can’t he keep his fingers out of the pot? 
 You and Mariquita didn’t interfere in his love 
 affair, and he’ll do no good interfering in 
 yours.” 
 
 Gore laughed. 
 
 “So you heard it all !” he said. 
 
 “No. If you had talked as loud as he did 
 I should. But you didn’t. It was easy to 
 hear him say that to-morrow he would go and 
 order Mariquita to marry you. If that had 
 been the end of it I just believe I should have 
 dressed myself and come in to tell him not to 
 be silly. But it wasn’t the end. Was it?” 
 “No. To stop that plan I promised I 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 181 
 
 would propose to Mariquita to-day — only he 
 was to say nothing about it to her first.” 
 “Well ; then I don’t know that he has done 
 any harm. You might do worse.” 
 
 “ I might do better.” 
 
 “ What better?” 
 
 “ Wait a bit.” 
 
 “ I’m not so sure. I don’t know that any 
 harm would come of waiting a bit, and I dare- 
 say it’s all very pleasant meanwhile. But you 
 can go on with your love-making after you’re 
 engaged just as well as before.” 
 
 “ Ah! If we were engaged!” 
 
 “ Pfush!” quoth Sarella, inventing a word 
 which stood her in stead of “ Pshaw.” 
 
 Gore had to laugh again, and no doubt her 
 good-natured certainty encouraged him— 
 albeit he did not believe she knew Mariquita. 
 
 “ What o’clock shall you propose?” she 
 enquired coolly. 
 
 Of course he could not tell her. 
 
 “ I guess,” she said, “ it will be between 
 two and three. Dinner at twelve. Digestion 
 and preliminaries, 12.45 to 1 . 45 . Proposal 
 2 . 45 , say. You will be engaged by 2 . 50 .” 
 
 As before, Gore liked the encouragement 
 though very largely discounting its worth. 
 
182 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 “ On the whole,” Sarella observed, “ I 
 daresay my old man has done good — as he has 
 made himself scarce. If he hadn’t threatened 
 to put his own foot in it, you might have gone 
 on staring up at Mariquita in the stars till she 
 was forty, and then it might have struck you 
 that you could get on fine without her.” 
 
 Sarella evidently thought that nothing was 
 to be done before the time she had indicated : 
 during the morning she was in evidence as 
 usual ; but immediately after dinner she 
 retreated to her studies, and was seen no more 
 for a long time. 
 
 Gore boldly announced his intention to be 
 idle and told Mariquita she must be idle too, 
 begging her to ride with him. To himself it 
 seemed as if everyone about the place must 
 see that something was in the wind : but the 
 truth was that everyone had been so long 
 expecting something definite to happen with- 
 out hearing of it, that some of them had 
 decided that Gore and Mariquita had fixed up 
 their engagement already at some unsuspected 
 moment, and the rest had almost ceased to 
 expect to hear anything. 
 
 As to Mariquita she was clearly unsus- 
 picious that this afternoon was to have any 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 188 
 
 special significance for her. Always cheerful 
 and unembarrassed, she was exactly her usual 
 self, untroubled by the faintest presentiment 
 of fateful events. Her ready agreement to 
 Gore’s proposal that they should ride together 
 was, he knew well, of no real good omen. It 
 made him have a guilty feeling, as if he were 
 getting her out under false pretences. 
 
 There was so happy a light of perfect, con- 
 fiding friendliness upon her face that it 
 seemed almost impossible to cloud it by the 
 suggestion of anything that would be different 
 from simple friendship. But must it be 
 clouded by such a suggestion? “ Clouding ” 
 means darkening ; was it really impossible for 
 that light, so trusting and so contented, of 
 unquestioning friendship, to be changed 
 without being rendered less bright ? Must Gore 
 assume her to be specially incapable of an 
 affection deeper than even friendship? No: 
 of anything good she was capable, no depths 
 of love could be beyond her : and he was sure 
 that her nature was one of deep affectionate- 
 ness, left unclaimed till now. The real 
 loneliness of her life, he told himself, had lain 
 in this very depth of unclaimed lovingness. 
 
184 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 And he told himself too, not untruly, that she 
 had been less lonely of late. 
 
 Gore might, he felt, hope to awake all that 
 dormant treasure of affection — if he had 
 time ! But he had no longer time. 
 
 He did truly, though not altogether, shrink 
 from the task he had set himself to-day. He 
 had a genuine reluctance to risk spoiling that 
 happy content of hers : yet he could not say 
 it was worse than a risk. There was the 
 counter possibility of that happy content 
 changing into something lovelier. 
 
 That Mariquita was not incapable of love he 
 told himself with full assurance, and he was 
 half disposed to believe that she was one who 
 would never love till asked for her love. 
 
 Sarella might be nearer right than he had 
 been. She was of much coarser fibre than 
 Mariquita, and perhaps he had made too 
 much of that, for she was a woman at all 
 events, and shrewd, watchful and a looker-on 
 with the proverbial advantages (maybe) over 
 the actors themselves. Sarella knew how 
 Mariquita spoke of him : though he did not 
 
 believe that between the two cousins there 
 had been confidences about himself : not real 
 confidences, though Sarella was just the girl 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 185 
 
 to “ chaff ” Mariquita about himself, and 
 would know how her chaff had been taken. 
 At all events Don Joaquin must be fore- 
 stalled : his blundering interference must be 
 prevented : and it could only be prevented by 
 Gore keeping his word and speaking himself. 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 He had kept his word, and had spoken. 
 They had been out together a long time when 
 the opportunity came : they had dismounted 
 and the horses were resting. He and she were 
 sitting in the shade of a small group of trees, 
 to two of which the horses were tied. Their 
 talk had turned naturally, and with scarcely 
 any purposeful guidance of his, in a direction 
 that helped him. And Mariquita talked with 
 frank unreserve : she felt at home with him 
 now, and her natural silence had long before 
 now been melted by his sincerity : her silence 
 of habit was chiefly habit, due not to distrust 
 or a guarded prudence but to the much simpler 
 fact that till his arrival she had never 
 since her home-coming been called upon to 
 speak in any real sense by anyone who cared 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 187 
 
 to hear her, or had an interest in what she 
 might have to say. 
 
 His proposal did not come with the least 
 abruptness : but it was clear and unmistake- 
 able when it came : and she understood — 
 Mariquita could understand a plain meaning 
 as well as anyone. 
 
 She did not interrupt, nor avert her gaze. 
 Indeed, she turned her eyes, which had been 
 looking far away across the lovely, empty 
 prairie to the horizon, to him as he spoke, and 
 her hands ceased their idle pulling at the grass 
 beside her. 
 
 In her eyes, as she listened, there was a 
 singular shining, and presently they held a 
 glistening like the dew in early morning 
 flowers. 
 
 Gore had not moved any nearer to her, nor 
 did he as he ceased. One hand of hers she 
 moved nearer to him, now, though not so as to 
 touch him. 
 
 “ That is what you want?” she said. “ Is 
 that what you have been wanting all the 
 time ? ’ ’ 
 
 Her voice was rather low, but most clear, 
 and it had no reproach. 
 
 “ Yes. What can you say to me?” 
 
188 
 
 MARIQU1TA 
 
 “I can only say how grateful it makes me.” 
 
 Her words almost astonished him. Though 
 he might have known that she must say only 
 exactly what was in her mind. They con- 
 veyed in themselves no refusal, but he knew 
 at once there was no hope for him in them. 
 
 “Grateful!” he exclaimed. “As if I 
 could help it ! ” 
 
 “ And as if I could help being grateful. It 
 is so great a thing ! For you to wish that. 
 There could be nothing greater. I can never 
 forget it. You must never think that I could 
 forget it . . . I — you know, Mr. Gore, 
 
 that I am not like most girls : being so very 
 ignorant. I have never read a novel. Even 
 the nuns told me that some of them are 
 beautiful and not bad at all, but the contrary. 
 Only I have never read any. I know they are 
 full of this matter — love and marriage. They 
 are great things : and concern nearly all the 
 men and women in the world : but not quite 
 all. I do not think I ever said to myself 
 ‘ They don’t concern you.’ I do not think 
 I ever thought about it : but if I had I believe 
 I should have known that that matter would 
 never concern me. Yet I do not want you to 
 misunderstand — Oh, if I could make you 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 189 
 
 understand, please ! I know that it is a great 
 thing, love and marriage, God’s way for most 
 men and women. And I think it a wonderful, 
 great thing that a man should wish that for 
 himself and me : should think that with me 
 he could be happier than in any other way. 
 Of course I never thought anyone would feel 
 that. It is a thing to thank you for, and 
 always I shall thank you . . .” 
 
 “ Is it impossible?” 
 
 She paused an infinitesimal moment and 
 said. 
 
 “ Just that. Impossible.” 
 
 “Would it be fair to ask why ‘impossible’ ?” 
 “ Not unfair at all. But perhaps I cannot 
 answer. I will try to answer. When you 
 told me what you wanted it pleased me 
 because you wanted it, and it hurt me because 
 I (who had never thought about it before) 
 knew at once that it was not possible to do 
 what you wanted, and I would so much rather 
 be able to please you.” 
 
 “ You will never be able to do anything 
 else but please me. Your refusing cannot 
 change your being yourself.” 
 
 Gore could not worry her with demands for 
 reasons. He knew there was no one else. He 
 
190 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 knew she was not incapable of loving — for he 
 knew, better than ever, that she loved greatly 
 and deeply all whom she knew. Nay, he 
 knew that she loved him, among them, but 
 more than any of them. And yet he saw that 
 she was simply right. What he had asked was 
 “ impossible, just that.” Better than himself 
 she would love no one, and in the fashion of a 
 wife she would love no one, ever. 
 
 Yet, he asked her a question, not to harry 
 her but because of her father. “ Perhaps you 
 have resolved never to marry,” he said. 
 
 “ I never thought of it. But, as soon as I 
 knew what you were saying, I knew I should 
 never marry anyone. It was not a resolution. 
 It was just a certainty. Alas ! our resolutions 
 are not certainties.” 
 
 “ But,” he said gently, feeling it necessary 
 to prepare her, “ your father may wish you to 
 marry.” 
 
 She paused, dubiously, and her brown skin 
 reddened a little. 
 
 “ You think so? Yes, he may,” she 
 answered in a troubled voice : for she feared 
 her father, more even than she was conscious 
 of. 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 191 
 
 “ I think he does,” Gore said, not watching 
 the poor girl’s troubled face. 
 
 “ He wants me to marry you?” she en- 
 quired anxiously. 
 
 “I am afraid so; ever since he made up his 
 mind. I do not think he liked the idea of 
 letting you marry me till long after he saw 
 what I hoped for. You see I began to hope 
 for it from the very first — from the day when 
 we first met, by the river. He did not like me 
 then ; he did not know whether to approve 
 of me or not. And at first he was inclined to 
 approve all the less because he saw I wanted 
 to win you for myself. I don’t know that he 
 likes me much even now ; but he approves, 
 and he approves of my plan. You know that 
 once he has made up his mind to approve a 
 plan, he likes it more and more. He gets 
 determined and obstinate about it.” 
 
 “ Yes. He will be angry.” 
 
 “ I am afraid so. But — it is because he 
 thinks it a father’s duty to arrange for his 
 daughter’s future : and this plan suited him.” 
 “ Oh yes ! I know he is a good man. He 
 will feel he is right in being angry.” 
 
 “But I don’t. He will be wrong. Though 
 he is your father he has not the right to try 
 
192 MARIQUITA 
 
 and force you to do what you say is im- 
 possible.” 
 
 “ Yes,” she said gently, 44 it is impossible. 
 But I shall not be able to make him see that.” 
 44 I see it. And it concerns me more than 
 it concerns him.” 
 
 44 You are more kind than anyone I ever 
 heard of,” She told him, 44 I never dared to 
 hope you would come to see that — that it is 
 impossible.” 
 
 ‘ 4 Can you tell him why ? ’ ’ 
 
 44 Perhaps I do not quite understand you.” 
 44 It seems a long time ago, now, to me 
 since I asked you if you could come to love 
 me and be my wife. Everything seems 
 changed and different. I wonder if I could 
 guess why you knew instantly that it was 
 impossible. It might help you with your 
 father.” 
 
 Mariquita listened, and gave no prohibition. 
 44 I think,” he said, “ you knew it was 
 impossible, because my words taught you, if 
 you did not know already, that you could be 
 
 no man’s wife ” 
 
 44 Oh yes! That is true.” 
 
 44 But perhaps they taught you also some- 
 thing else, which you may not have known 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 193 
 
 before — that you could belong only to God.” 
 “ I have known that always,” she answered 
 simply. 
 
 N 
 
CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 When Don Joaquin returned he was in an 
 unusually bad temper, and it was well that 
 Mariquita had gone to bed. Gore was sitting 
 up, and, though it was long past Sarella’s 
 usual hour, she had insisted on sitting up 
 also. This was good-natured of her, for there 
 was no pleasure to be anticipated from the 
 interview with Don Joaquin, and she disliked 
 any derangement of her habits. Gore had 
 begged her to retire at her ordinary hour but 
 she had flatly refused. 
 
 “ I can do more with him than you can,” 
 she declared, quite truly, “ though no one 
 will be able to stop his being as savage as a 
 bear. I’m sorry for Mariquita : she’ll have a 
 bad time to-morrow, and it won’t end with 
 to-morrow. ’ ’ 
 
 Meanwhile she took the trouble to have 
 ready a good supper for Don Joaquin, and 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 195 
 
 made rather a special toilette in which to help 
 him to it. Sarella was not in the least afraid 
 of him, and had no great dread of a row 
 which concerned someone else. Don Joaquin 
 was not, however, particularly mollified by 
 the becoming dress, nor by finding his 
 betrothed sitting up for him, as she was 
 sitting up with Gore. 
 
 “ Where’s Mariquita?” he asked, as he 
 sat down to eat. 
 
 “ In bed long ago. I hope you’ll like that 
 chicken : it’s done in a special way we have, 
 and the recipe’s my patent. I haven’t 
 taught it to Mariquita.” 
 
 “ Why aren’t you in bed?” 
 
 “ Because I preferred waiting to see you 
 safe at home,” Sarella replied with an en- 
 trancing smile. 
 
 “ Was Mr. Gore anxious too?” Don 
 Joaquin demanded sarcastically. 
 
 “ It is not a quarter of an hour later than 
 my usual time for going to bed,” Gore 
 answered. “ And I thought it better to see 
 you : you would, I believe, have expected to 
 see me.” 
 
 “ Very well. You have done as you said?” 
 
 “ Yes.” Gore glanced at Sarella, and Don 
 
196 MARIQUITA 
 
 Joaquin told her that she had now better sit 
 up no longer. 
 
 “ I think I had,” she told him, “ I know 
 all about it.” 
 
 “ Is it all settled?” Don Joaquin asked 
 looking at Gore, “ Have you fixed it up?” 
 
 Gore found this abruptness and haste made 
 his task very difficult. 
 
 He had to consider how to form his reply. 
 
 “ He proposed to Mariquita,” Sarella cut 
 in, “ But she refused him.” 
 
 “Refused him!” Don Joaquin almost 
 shouted. 
 
 “ Unfortunately it is so,” Gore was 
 beginning, but his host interrupted him. 
 
 “ I do not choose she should refuse,” he 
 said angrily. “I will tell her so before you see 
 her in the morning.” 
 
 Gore was angry himself, and rose from his 
 seat. 
 
 “ No,” he said, “ I will not agree to that. 
 She knows her own mind, and it will not 
 change. You must not persecute her on my 
 account.” 
 
 “ It is not on your account. I choose to 
 have duty and obedience from my own 
 daughter. ’ ’ 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 197 
 
 4 4 Joaquin,” said Sarella (Gore had never 
 before heard her call him by his Christian 
 name) 44 it is no use taking it that way. 
 Mariquita is not undutiful, and you must 
 know it. But she will not marry Mr. Gore — 
 or anybody.” 
 
 44 Of course she will marry,” cried the poor 
 girl’s father fiercely, 44 That is the duty of 
 every girl.” 
 
 Sarella slightly smiled. 
 
 44 Then many girls do not do their duty,” 
 she said, in her even, unimpassioned tones. 
 Her elderly fiance was about to burst into 
 another explosion, but she would not let him. 
 
 44 Many Catholic girls,” she reminded him, 
 44 remain unmarried.” 
 
 44 To be nuns — that is different.” 
 
 44 It is my belief,” she observed in a 
 detached manner, as if indulging in a mere 
 surmise, 44 that Mariquita will be a nun.” 
 “Mariquita! Has she said so?” he 
 demanded sharply. 
 
 44 Not to me,” Sarella replied, quite uncon- 
 cernedly. 
 
 44 Nor to me,” Gore explained, 44 never- 
 theless I believe it will be so.” 
 
 44 That depends on me,” the girl’s father 
 
198 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 asserted with an unpleasant mixture of 
 annoyance and obstinacy. “ I intend her to 
 marry.” 
 
 “ Only a Protestant,” said Sarella, with a 
 shrewd understanding of Don Joaquin that 
 surprised Gore, “ would marry her if she 
 believes she has a vocation to be a nun. I 
 should think a Catholic man would be ashamed 
 to do it. Pie would expect a judgment on 
 himself and his children.” 
 
 Don Joaquin was as angry as ever, as 
 savage as ever, but he was startled. Both his 
 companions could see this. Gore was aston- 
 ished at Sarella’s speech, and at her acumen. 
 He had wished to have this interview with 
 Mariquita’s father to himself, but already saw 
 that Sarella knew how to conduct it better 
 than he did. She had clearly been quite 
 willing that “the old man” (as he disrespect- 
 fully called him in his own mind) should fly 
 out and give way to his fiery temper at once : 
 the more of it went off now the less would 
 remain for poor Mariquita to endure. 
 
 “ If I were a Catholic man,” Sarella con- 
 tinued coolly, “ I should think it profane to 
 make a girl marry — one who had given herself 
 to be a nun. I expect the Lord would 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 199 
 
 punish it.” She paused meditatively, and 
 then added, “ and all who joined in pushing 
 her to it. I know I wouldn’t join. I think 
 folks have enough of their own to answer for, 
 without bringing judgments down on their 
 heads for things like that. It won’t get me to 
 heaven to help in interfering between 
 Mariquita and her way of getting there.” 
 
 All the while she spoke Sarella seemed to 
 be admiring, with her head turned on one 
 side, the prettiness of her left wrist on which 
 was a gold bangle, with a crystal heart 
 dangling from it. Don Joaquin had given 
 her the bangle, and himself admired the heart 
 chiefly because it was crystal and not of 
 diamonds. 
 
 “ Isn’t it pretty?” she said, looking 
 suddenly up and catching his eye watching 
 her. 
 
 “ I thought you hadn’t cared much for it,” 
 he answered, greatly pleased. He had always 
 known she would have preferred a smaller 
 heart if crusted with diamonds. 
 
 Gore longed to laugh. She astonished and 
 puzzled him. Her cleverness was a revelation 
 to him, and her good-nature ; her subtlety, 
 and her earnestness — for he knew she had 
 
200 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 been in earnest in what she said about not 
 daring to interfere with other people’s ways 
 of getting to heaven. 
 
 “ That old nun who instructs her,” he 
 thought, “ must have taught her a lot.” 
 
 Of course, on his own account, he was no 
 more afraid of Don Joaquin than she was. 
 But he had been terribly afraid of the hard old 
 man on Mariquita’s, and he was deeply grate- 
 ful to Sarella. 
 
 “ Sir,” he said, “ what she has said to you 
 I do feel myself. I am a Catholic — and the 
 dearest of my sisters is a nun. I should have 
 hated and despised any man who had tried to 
 spoil her life by snatching it to himself against 
 her will. He would have to be a wicked 
 fellow, and brutal, and impious. God’s curse 
 would lie on him. So it would on me if I did 
 that hideous thing : though God knows to-day 
 has brought me the great disappointment of 
 my life. Life can never be for me what I have 
 been hoping it might be. Never.” 
 
 Sarella, listening, and knowing that the two 
 men were looking at each other, smiled at her 
 bangle, and softly shook the dangling heart 
 to make the crystal give as diamond-like 
 a glitter as possible. Gore’s life, she thought, 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 201 
 
 would come all right. She had done her best 
 valorously for Mariquita : women, in her 
 theory, behoved to do their best for each other 
 against masculine tyranny (“ bossishness ” 
 she called it) : but all the time she was half- 
 savage, herself, with the girl for not being 
 willing to be happy in so obviously com- 
 fortable a way as offered. It seemed to her 
 4 4 wasteful ” that so pretty a girl should go 
 and be a nun : if she had been 44 homey ” like 
 Sister Aquinas it w r ould have been different. 
 But Sarella had learned from Sister Aquinas 
 that these matters were above her, and was 
 quite content to accept them without under- 
 standing them. 
 
 44 Ever since I came here,” Gore was 
 saying, 44 I have lived in a dream of what life 
 would be — if I could join hers with mine. It 
 was only a dream : and I had to awake.” 
 
 Don Joaquin did not understand his mind, 
 but he was able now to see that the young 
 man suffered, and had received a blow that, 
 somehow, would change his life, and turn its 
 course aside. 
 
 44 Anything,” Gore said, in a very low, 
 almost thankful tone, 4 4 is better than it would 
 have been if I had changed my dream for a 
 
202 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 night-mare : it would have been that if I had 
 to think of myself as trying to pull her down 
 from her level to mine, of her as having been 
 brought down. I meant to do her all possible 
 good, all my life long. How can I wish to 
 have done her the greatest harm ? As it 
 would have been if, out of fear or over- 
 persuasion, she had been brought to call her- 
 self my wife who could be no man’s wife.” 
 
 (“ How he loves her !” thought Sarella.) 
 
 (“ I doubt it has wrecked him a bit,” 
 thought Don Joaquin.) 
 
CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 Mariquita awoke early to see Sarella entering 
 her room, and it surprised her, for her cousin 
 was not fond of leaving her bed betimes. 
 
 “ Oh, I’m going back to bed again,” 
 Sarella explained. “We were up to all hours. 
 Of course your father made a rumpus.” 
 Mariquita heard this with less surprise than 
 concern. It really grieved her to displease 
 him.” 
 
 “He has very queer old-fashioned notions,” 
 Sarella remarked, settling herself comfortably 
 on Mariquita’s bed, “ and thinks it’s his 
 business to arrange all your affairs for you. 
 Besides, you know by this time that any plan 
 he has been hatching he expects to hatch out, 
 and not to help him seems to him most 
 undutiful and shocking.” 
 
 “ But I can’t help him in this plan of his,” 
 Mariquita pleaded unhappily. 
 
 “ I suppose not. Well, he flared out, and 
 
204 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 I was glad you were in bed. Gore behaved 
 very well. It’s a thousand pities you can’t 
 like him.” 
 
 “ But I do like him. I like him better than 
 any man I ever knew.” 
 
 “ Oh, yes ! Better than the cowboys or 
 the old chaplain at Loretto. That’s no good.” 
 All this Sarella intended as medicinal : 
 Mariquita, she thought, ought to have some 
 of the chill of the late storm. She was not 
 entitled to immediate and complete relief 
 from suspense. But Sarella was beginning to 
 feel a little chill about the legs herself, and did 
 not care to risk a cold : so she abbreviated her 
 disciplinary remarks a little. 
 
 “ I’m a good step-mother,” she remarked 
 complacently, “ not at all like one in a novel. 
 I took your part.” 
 
 “Did you!” Mariquita cried gratefully, 
 “It was very, very kind of you.” 
 
 “ I don’t approve of men having things all 
 their own way — whether fathers or husbands. 
 He has been knocked under to too much. 
 Yes, I took your part, and made him under- 
 stand that if he kept the row up he’d have 
 three of us against him.” 
 
 “ What did you say?” 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 205 
 
 “ All sorts of things. Never mind. Per- 
 haps Mr. Gore will tell you — only he won’t. 
 He said a lot of things too. We made your 
 father think he would be wicked if he went 
 on bullying you.” 
 
 Of course Mariquita did not understand 
 how this had been effected. 
 
 “ He would not do anything wicked,” she 
 said, “ he is a very good man.” 
 
 “ He’d be a very good mule,” Sarella 
 observed coolly, considerably scandalizing 
 Mariquita. 
 
 “You’d have found him a pretty unpleasant 
 one, if Gore and I had left you to manage 
 him yourself.” Sarella added, entirely un- 
 moved by her cousin’s shocked look. “ We 
 managed him. Pie w T on’t beat you now. 
 But you’d better keep out of his way as much 
 as you can for a bit. If I were you I’d have 
 a bad headache and stop in bed.” 
 
 “ But I haven’t a headache. I never do 
 have headaches.” 
 
 Sarella made a queer face, and sighed, then 
 laughed. 
 
 “ Anyway you’re not to be made to marry 
 Mr. Gore,” she said. 
 
 Mariquita looked enormously relieved, and 
 
206 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 began to express her grateful sense of 
 Sarella’s good offices. 
 
 “For that matter,” Sarella cut in, “neither 
 will Mr. Gore be made to marry you — so if 
 you change your mind it will be no good. He 
 thinks it would be wicked to marry you.” 
 
 Mariquita perfectly understood that Sarella 
 was trying to make her sorry, and only gave 
 a cheerful little laugh. 
 
 “ Then,” she said “ I shall certainly not 
 ask him. It would be quite useless to ask him 
 to do anything wicked.” 
 
 “ The fact is,” Sarella told her, “ that you 
 and he ought to be put in a glass-case — two 
 glass-cases, you’d both of you be quite 
 shocked at the idea of being in one — and 
 labelled. It’s a good thing you’re unique. If 
 other lovers were like you two, there’d be no 
 marriages.” 
 
 She got up, and prepared to return to her 
 own room. 
 
 “Hulloa!” she said, “there’s the auto. 
 Your father’s going off somewhere, and you 
 can get up. Probably he is taking Gore 
 away.” 
 
 “ Is Mr. Gore going away?” 
 
 “He’ll have to. There’s no one here for 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 207 
 
 him to marry except Ginger : but no doubt 
 you want him to become a monk.” 
 
 “ A monk ! He hasn’t the least idea of 
 such a thing.” 
 
 “Oh dear!” sighed Sarella, instantly 
 changing the sigh into a laugh. “How funny 
 you people are who never condescend to see a 
 joke.” 
 
 “ I didn’t know,” Mariquita confessed 
 meekly, “ that you had made one.” 
 
CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 Don Joaquin was not yet recovered from his 
 annoyance. As Sarella had perceived he 
 could not easily condone the defective conduct 
 of those who, owing him obedience, refused 
 to carry out a plan that he had long been 
 meditating. But he had been frightened by 
 the picture she had suggested of Divine 
 judgment : and wondered if the hitches that 
 had occurred in the issue of the dispensation 
 for his marriage had been a hint of them — a 
 threatening of what would happen if he 
 opposed the heavenly will concerning his 
 daughter’s vocation. It was chiefly because 
 the plan of her marriage had been deliberately 
 adopted by himself that he was reluctant to 
 abandon it. Her own plan of becoming a nun 
 would, he gradually came to see, suit him 
 quite as well. And presently he became 
 aware that, financially, it would suit him even 
 better. If she “ entered Religion ” he 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 209 
 
 would have to give her a dowry : but not, he 
 imagined, a large one, five thousand dollars 
 or so, he guessed. Whereas, if she m trried 
 Gore, he would be expected to give her much 
 more. Besides her marriage would very likely 
 involve subsequent gifts and expenditure. It 
 would all come out of what he wished to save 
 for the beloved son of whom he was always 
 thinking. As a nun too Mariquita would be 
 largely engaged in praying for the soul of her 
 mother, and for his own soul and Sarella’s 
 and her brother’s. 
 
 By the time he and Mariquita met he had 
 grasped all these advantages, and, though 
 aloof and disapproving in his manner, he did 
 not attack her. 
 
 As it pleased him to admire in Sarella a 
 delightful shrewdness in affairs, he gave her 
 credit for favouring Mariquita’s plan because 
 it would leave more money for her own 
 children. In this he paid her an undeserved 
 compliment, for Sarella did not know in the 
 least that Mariquita would receive less of her 
 father’s money if she became a nun than if 
 she married Mr. Gore. She had not thought 
 of it, being much of opinion that Gore would 
 ask for nothing in the way of dowry and that 
 o 
 
210 MARIQUITA 
 
 Don Joaquin would give nothing without 
 much asking. 
 
 Don Joaquin was considerably taken aback 
 to learn that Mariquita had formed no definite 
 plans yet as to her “ entering Religion.” 
 He had promptly decided that, of course, she 
 would go back to Loretto as a nun : and he 
 was proportionally surprised to find that she 
 had no such idea. This surprise he expressed, 
 almost in dudgeon, to Sarella. He appeared 
 to consider himself quite ill-used by such 
 vagueness : if young women wanted to be 
 nuns it behoved them to know exactly where 
 they meant to go, and what religious work 
 they felt called to undertake. 
 
 “ If I were you,” Sarella told him, after 
 some hasty consideration, “I would let her go 
 to Loretto — on a visit. You will find she 
 makes up her mind quicker there — with 
 nothing to distract her. Sister Aquinas- talks 
 of Retreats — Mariquita could make one.” 
 
 “ Who’s to do the work here while she’s 
 away?” grumbled Don Joaquin. 
 
 “ It will have to be done when she’s gone 
 for good. We may just as well think it out.” 
 Sarella was quite resolved that she would 
 never be the slave Mariquita had been, and 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 211 
 
 did not mind having the struggle, if there was 
 to be one, now. 
 
 “ Whether Mariquita married or became a 
 nun,” she went on, “ she would be gone from 
 here. Her place would have to be supplied — 
 more than supplied, for a young wife like me 
 could not do nearly so much work. I should 
 have things to do an unmarried girl has not, 
 and be unfit for much work. I am sure you 
 understand that. Sister Aquinas knows two 
 sisters, very respectable and trustworthy, 
 steady, and not too young. I meant to speak 
 to you about them. They would suit us 
 well. They will not separate, and for that 
 matter, we can’t do with less than two.” 
 
 Sarella’s great object was to open the 
 matter : she intended to succeed but did not 
 count on instant success, or success without a 
 struggle. Don Joaquin had to be familiarized 
 with a scheme some time before he would 
 adopt it. He rebelled at first and for that 
 rebellion she punished him. 
 
 “ Mariquita’s position was wrong,” she 
 told him boldly. “ It tended to make her 
 unlike other girls and give her unusual ideas. 
 She was tied by the leg here, by too much 
 work, and her only rest or recreation was 
 
212 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 solitary thinking. If she had been taken 
 about and met her equals she would have been 
 like other girls, I expect. She was a slave and 
 sought her freedom in the skies.” 
 
 Don Joaquin enjoyed this philippic very 
 little : perhaps he only partly understood it, 
 but he did understand that Sarella thought 
 Mariquita had been put upon and did not 
 intend being put upon herself. He would 
 have been much less influenced if he had 
 thought of Sarella as specially devoted to his 
 daughter or blindly fond of her, but he had 
 always believed that there was but a cool 
 sympathy between the two girls, and that 
 Sarella would have found fault with Mariquita 
 quite willingly if there had been fault to find. 
 
 “ You have taken up the cudgels,” he said 
 sourly, “very strongly for Mariquita of late.” 
 “ As time goes on I naturally feel able to 
 speak more plainly than I could when I first 
 came here. I was only your guest. It is 
 different ‘ of late.’ And I am ‘ taking up the 
 cudgels’ for myself more than for Mariquita.” 
 “ Oh, I quite see that,” he retorted with a 
 savage grin. 
 
 Sarella determined to hit back, and she was 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 213 
 
 by no means restrained by scruples as to 
 “ hitting below the belt.” 
 
 “Fortunately for her,” she said, “Mariquita 
 has splendid health, and work did not kill her. 
 She has the strength of a horse. Her mother 
 did not leave it to her. I have always heard 
 in the family that Aunt Margaret was delicate, 
 physically unfit for hard work. Men do not 
 notice those things. She died too young, and 
 might have lived much longer if she had not 
 over-taxed her strength. She ought to have 
 been prevented from doing so much work. 
 You were not too poor to have allowed her 
 plenty of help — and you are much better off 
 now.” 
 
 Don Joaquin almost jumped with horror : 
 he had really adored his wife, and now he was 
 being flatly and relentlessly accused of having 
 perhaps shortened her life by lack of con- 
 sideration for her. And was it true ? He could 
 not help remembering much to support the 
 accusation. She had been a woman of feeble 
 health and feeble temper : her singular beauty 
 of feature and colouring had been in every eye 
 but Joaquin’s own, marred by an expression 
 of discontent and complaining : though she 
 had been too much in awe of her masterful 
 
214 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 husband to set out her grievances to him ; he 
 guessed now that she must have written 
 grumbling letters to her relations far away in 
 the east. The man was no monster of cruelty : 
 he was merely stingy and money-loving, 
 hard-natured, and without imagination. Pos- 
 sessed of iron health himself he had never con- 
 ceived that the sort of work his Indian mother 
 had submissively performed could be beyond 
 the strength of his wife. It was true that he 
 was much richer now than he had been when 
 he married, and Sarella had herself accustomed 
 him to the idea of greater expenditure, how- 
 ever dexterously he might have done his best 
 to neutralise those spendings. He was more 
 obstinately set upon marrying her than ever, 
 because he had for a long time now decided 
 upon the marriage : he was nervously afraid of 
 her drawing back if he didn’t yield to her 
 wishes, the utterance of which he took to be a 
 sort of ultimatum. 
 
 “ Are these two women Catholics?” he 
 demanded, feeling sure that Sister Aquinas 
 would only recommend such, “I will not have 
 Protestant servants in the house.” 
 
 “ They are excellent Catholics,” Sarella 
 assured him, “ educated in the convent.” 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 215 
 
 “ Then I will consider the plan. You can 
 ask Sister Aquinas about the conditions — 
 wages, and so forth.” 
 
 “ What a pity,” thought Sarella, when the 
 interview had ended, “ that Mariquita never 
 knew how to manage him.” 
 
CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 There was no pomp of leave-taking about 
 Mariquita’s departure for Loretto. She was 
 only going on a visit, and would return. 
 
 “ Whatever you decide upon,” Sarella in- 
 sisted, “you must come back for your father’s 
 wedding.” 
 
 Mariquita promised, and went away, her 
 father driving her all the way to Loretto in the 
 auto. Her departure did not move him much, 
 though he would have been better pleased 
 after all if she were going away to a husband’s 
 house. Sarella, watching them disappear in 
 the distance felt it more than the stoical old 
 half-breed. 
 
 “ I shall miss her,” she said to herself, “ I 
 like her better than I thought I shoidd. She’s 
 as straight as an arrow, and as true as gold. I 
 suppose this watch is gold, he’d never dare to 
 give me rolled gold . . . Only nine o’clock. 
 
 It will be a long day, and I shall miss her all 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 217 
 
 the time. Quiet as she is it will make a lot of 
 difference. No one has such a nice way of 
 laughing, when she does laugh. I wonder if 
 she guesses how little her father cares? He 
 won’t miss her much. Some men care never 
 a pin for a woman unless they want to marry 
 her. He has no use for the others. I expect 
 it makes them good husbands, though. Poor 
 Mariquita ! I think I should have hated him 
 if I had been her. It never occurred to her : 
 at first I thought she must be an A. I. hypo- 
 crite, she seemed to think him so exactly all 
 that he ought to be to her. Then I thought 
 she must be stupid — I soon saw she was as 
 sincere as a baby. But she’s not stupid either. 
 She’s just Mariquita : she really does see only 
 the things she ought to see, and it’s queer. I 
 never saw anyone else that way. I thought at 
 first she must be jealous of me, the old man 
 put her so completely on one side, and made 
 such a lot of me. Any other girl would have 
 been. I soon saw she wasn’t : it never entered 
 her head that he might leave me money that 
 ought to be hers — it would have entered mine, 
 I know. But ‘ she never thought of that ’ 
 as she used to say about everything.” Oddly 
 enough it was at this particular recollection 
 
218 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 that a certain dewy brightness (that became 
 them well) glistened in Sarella’s pretty eyes. 
 
 “ Well,” she thought, “ I’m glad I can 
 call to mind that I did the best I could for her. 
 It made me feel just sick to think of the old 
 man brow-beating and bullying her. I saw a 
 big hulking fellow beat his little girl once, 
 and I felt just the same : only I could do 
 nothing, then, but scream. I was a child 
 myself, and I did scream, and I bit him. I’m 
 glad I did bite, him, though I was spanked for 
 it. I suppose I’ll have to confess biting him, 
 though I don’t call it a sin. What on earth 
 can Mariquita confess? At first her goodness 
 put my back up. But I wish she was back. 
 It never occurs to her that she’s good. I soon 
 found that out. And she thinks everyone else 
 as good as gold. She thinks all these cow- 
 boys good, and she does almost make them 
 want to be. It was funny that she didn’t dis- 
 like me. (I should have if I’d been in her 
 place.) When she kissed me good-bye and 
 said ‘ Sarella, we’ll never forget each other ’ ; 
 it meant more than pounds of candy-talk from 
 another girl. Forget her! Not I. Will 
 Gore? He will never think any other girl her 
 equal. Mrs. Gore may make up her mind to 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 219 
 
 that. Perhaps he’ll marry someone not half 
 so good as himself and rather like it. Pfuh ! 
 It feels lonesome now. I often used to get 
 into my own room to get out of Mariquita’s 
 way, and stretch the legs of my mind over a 
 novel. I wish she was here now . . .” 
 
 And Sarella did not speedily give over 
 missing Mariquita. She was a girl who on 
 principle preferred men’s society to that of 
 other women, but in practice had considerable 
 need of female companionship. She liked 
 to make men admire her, but she did not 
 much care to be admired by the cow-boys, 
 and took it for granted that they already 
 admired her as much as befitted their inferior 
 position. She had always been too shrewd to 
 try and make other women admire her, but 
 she liked talking to them about clothes which 
 no man understands ; and, though Mariquita 
 had been careless about her own sumptuary 
 affairs, she had been a wonderfully appreciative 
 (or long-suffering) listener when Sarella 
 talked about hers. 
 
 “ And after all,” Sarella confessed, “ she 
 had taste. My style would not have suited 
 her. That plain style of her own was best for 
 her,” 
 
220 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 When Don Joaquin returned from Denver 
 he seemed unlike himself, almost subdued. 
 He had been much impressed by the great 
 convent and its large community : the nuns 
 had made much of him, and of Mariquita. 
 They spoke in a way that at last put it into his 
 head that he had undervalued her : there is 
 nothing for awaking our appreciation of our 
 own near relations like the sudden perception 
 that other people think greatly of them. 
 Gore’s respect and admiration for his daughter 
 had not done much, for he had only looked 
 upon it as the blind predilection of a young 
 man in love with a beautiful girl. Several of 
 the nuns, including their Reverend Mother, 
 had spoken to him apart, in Mariquita’s 
 absence, not immediately on his and her 
 arrival, but on the evening of the following 
 day : on the morrow he was to depart on his 
 return to the range : and in these conversa- 
 tions the sisters let him plainly see that they 
 regarded the girl as peculiarly graced by God, 
 and of rarely high and noble character. 
 
 He asked the Superior if she thought Mari- 
 quita would wish to stay with them and be- 
 come one of themselves. 
 
 “ No,” was the answer, “She is a born 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 221 
 
 Contemplative. Every nun must be a con- 
 templative in some degree, but I use the word 
 in its common sense. I mean that I believe 
 she will find herself called to an order of pure 
 contemplatives. She will make a Retreat 
 here, and very likely will be shown during it 
 what is God’s will for her. 
 
 It surprised the kind and warm hearted 
 Religious that he did not enquire whether that 
 life were not very hard. But she took 
 charitable refuge in the supposition that he 
 knew so little about one order or another as 
 to be free from the dread that his child might 
 have a life of great austerity before her. 
 
 “ You may be sure,” she said, in case later 
 on any such affectionate misgivings should 
 trouble him, “ that she will be happy. Un- 
 seen by you or us she will do great things for 
 God and His children. You shall share in it 
 by giving her to Him when He calls. She 
 is your only child (“ As yet,” thought Don 
 Joaquin, even now more concerned for her 
 brother than for her) and God will reward 
 your generosity. He never lets Himself be 
 outstripped in that. For the gift of 
 Abraham’s son He blest his whole race,” 
 
 Don Joaquin knew very little about 
 
222 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 Abraham, but he understood that all the Jews 
 since his time had been notably successful in 
 finance. 
 
 It did not cause him any particular emotion 
 to leave his daughter. She was being left where 
 she liked to be, and would doubtless be at 
 home among these holy women who seemed 
 to think so much of her, and to be so fond of 
 her. He had forgiven her for wishing to be a 
 nun and thought highly of himself for having 
 given his permission. 
 
 The nuns thought he concealed his feelings 
 to spare Mariquita’s, and praised God for the 
 unselfishness of parents. 
 
 Mariquita had never expected tenderness 
 from him, but she thought him a good man 
 and a good father, and was very grateful for 
 his concession in abandoning his insistence on 
 her marriage, and sanctioning her choice of 
 her own way of life. And he did embrace 
 her on parting, and bade God bless her, 
 reminding her that it would be her duty to 
 pray much for himself and Sarella. At the 
 range he found a letter, which had arrived late 
 on the day on which he had left home with her 
 and this letter he took as a proof that she had 
 prayed to some purpose. The dispensation 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 228 
 
 was granted and he could now fix his marriage 
 for any date he chose. 
 
 “ Did she send me her love?” Sarella asked 
 jealous of being at all forgotten. 
 
 “ Yes, twice : and when I kissed her she 
 said ‘ Kiss Sarella for me.’ Also she sent you 
 a letter.” 
 
 Sarella received very few letters and liked 
 getting them. She was rather curious to see 
 what sort of a letter Mariquita would write, 
 and made up her mind it would be “ nunnish 
 and poky.” 
 
 Whether “ nunnish ” or no it was not 
 “ poky ” but pleasant, very cheerful and 
 bright, and very affectionate. It contained 
 little jokish allusions to home matters, and 
 former confidential talks, and one passage 
 (much valued by Sarella) concerning a gown, 
 retracting a former opinion and substituting 
 another backed by most valid reasons. “ If 
 those speckled hens go on eating each other’s 
 feathers,” said the letter, “ you’ll have to kill 
 them and eat them. Once they start they 
 never give it up, and it puts the idea in the 
 others’ heads. Feathers don’t suit everybody, 
 but fowls look wicked without them. I hope 
 poor old Jack doesn’t miss me ; give him and 
 
224 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 Ginger my love : and ask him to forgive me 
 for not marrying Mr. Gore — he gave me a 
 terrible lecture about it : and Ginger said 
 ‘ Quit it, Dad ! I knew she wouldn’t. I 
 know sweethearts when I see them — though I 
 never did see one — not of my own.’ I expect 
 Larry Burke will show her one soon, don’t 
 you, Sarella? It will do very well : Larry will 
 have the looks and Ginger will have the sense, 
 and teach him all he needs. He has such a 
 good heart he can get on without too much 
 sense . . .” 
 
 Sarella liked her letter, and decided that 
 Mariquita was not lost though removed. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 “ I suppose,” Don Joaquin remarked in a 
 disengaged manner, “ that, after ail your 
 preparations, we can fix the day for our 
 wedding any time now.” 
 
 Sarella was not in the least taken in by his 
 elaborate air of having been able, for his part, 
 to have fixed a day long ago. 
 
 It was, however, part of her system to fall 
 in with people’s whimsies when nothing was 
 to be gained by opposing or exposing them. 
 
 “Oh, yes,” she agreed, most amiably. “It 
 will take three Sundays to publish the banns 
 — any day after that. Meanwhile I should be 
 received. Sister Aquinas says I am ready. 
 As soon as we have settled the exact time we 
 must let Mariquita know, and you can, when 
 the time comes, go over and fetch her home.” 
 Don Joaquin consented, and Sarella 
 thought she would go and deliver Mariquita’s 
 message to Jack and his daughter. She found 
 
 p 
 
226 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 them together and began by saying, smilingly, 
 
 “ I expect you have known for a long while 
 that there was a marriage in the air?” 
 
 Old Jack had not learned to like her, and 
 Ginger still disliked her smile. 
 
 “ I don’t believe,” she said perversely, for, 
 of course, both she and her father understood 
 perfectly, “ that Miss Mariquita is going to 
 be married. She’s not that way.” 
 
 This was a discouraging opening, for it 
 seemed to cast a sort of slur on young women 
 who were likely to be married. 
 
 “Mr. Gore’s never asked again!” cried 
 Jack. 
 
 “ Dad, don’t you be silly,” Ginger sug- 
 gested, “ everyone knows Miss Mariquita 
 wants to be a nun.” 
 
 “ Yes,” said Sarella with impregnable 
 amiability, “ but we can’t all be nuns. Miss 
 Mariquita doesn’t seem to think you likely to 
 be one. She sent me back by her father such 
 a nice letter. She sends Jack and you her love 
 and, though she doesn’t send Larry Burke her 
 love, thinking of you evidently makes her 
 think of him.” 
 
 Ginger visibly relaxed, and her father 
 stared appallingly with his one eye. 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 227 
 
 “ Good Lord!’’ quoth he in more sincere 
 than flattering astonishment. 
 
 “Well, he is good,” Ginger observed coolly, 
 “and there’s worse folk than Larry Burke, or 
 me either.” 
 
 “ Miss Mariquita thinks it would be such a 
 good thing for him,” Sarella reported. “ So 
 must any one.” 
 
 Ginger felt that this, after her unpleasant- 
 ness to the young lady who brought the 
 message, was handsome. 
 
 “ He might do better,” she declared “ and 
 he might do worse.” 
 
 “ Has he said anything?” her father en- 
 quired with undisguised incredulity. 
 
 “ What he’s said is nothing,” Ginger calm- 
 ly replied. “ It’s what I think as matters. 
 He’s no Creosote, but he’s got a bit — or 
 ought, if he hasn’t spent it. I’d keep his 
 money together for him, and he’d soon find 
 it a saving. And I could do with him — for if 
 his head’s soft so’s his heart. I think, Dad,” 
 she concluded willing “ to take it out ” of her 
 father for his unflattering incredulity, “ you 
 may as well, when Miss Sarella’s gone, tell 
 him to step round. I’ll soon fix it.” 
 
 “ I couldn’t do that,” Jack expostulated. 
 
228 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 “ Why not?” Ginger demanded with fell 
 determination. 
 
 “ I really don’t see why you shouldn’t,” 
 Sarella protested, much amused though not 
 betraying it. “It’s all for his good,” she 
 added seriously. 
 
 Jack was shaken, hut not yet disposed to 
 obedience. 
 
 “ Larry,” Sarella urged, “ won’t be so 
 much surprised as you think. Miss Mariquita, 
 you see, wants him and Ginger to make a 
 match of it ” 
 
 “ But does /ie?” Jack pleaded, moved by 
 Mariquita’s opinion, but not so sure it would 
 reduce Larry to subjection. 
 
 “Tut!” said Ginger impatiently, “What’s 
 he to do with it? If he don’t know what’s 
 best for him, I do. So does Miss Sarella. So 
 does Miss Mariquita.” 
 
 “ And,” Sarella added, “ you may be sure 
 Miss Mariquita would never have said a word 
 about it if she hadn’t felt pretty sure it was to 
 come off. She’s never been one to be 
 planning marriages. Why, Larry must have 
 made it as plain as a pikestaff that he was 
 ready or she would never have guessed it,” 
 
MARIQUITA 229 
 
 The weight of this argument left Jack 
 defenceless. 
 
 “ Hadn’t you better wait, Ginger,” he 
 attempted to argue with shallow subtlety, 
 “ he’s like enough to step round after supper. 
 Then I’d clear, and you could say what you 
 liked.” 
 
 “ No,” Ginger decided, “I’m tired of him 
 stepping round after supper, just to chatter. 
 He’d be prepared if you told him I’d said he 
 w r as to come. He’d know something was 
 wanted. In fact you’d better tell him.” 
 “Tell him? Me? Tell him what?” 
 
 “Just that I’d made up my mind to say yes 
 if he’d a question to ask me.” 
 
 “ Why,” cried Jack, aghast, “ he’d get on 
 his horse and scoot.” 
 
 “ Not far,” Ginger opined entirely un- 
 moved. “He’d ride back. He’s not pluck 
 enough to be such a coward as to scoot for 
 good. Just you try.” 
 
 The two women drove the battered old 
 fellow off. Ginger laughed and said, 
 
 “ Aren’t men helpless?” 
 
 Sarella was full of admiration of her 
 prowess. 
 
 “ Well, you’re not,” she said. 
 
280 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 “ Not me. But Dad won’t find Larry as 
 much surprised as he thinks. It’s been in the 
 silly chap’s head (or where folks keep their 
 ideas that have no head) this three weeks. I 
 saw, though he never said a lot ” 
 
 Overpowered by curiosity Sarella asked 
 boldly what he did say. 
 
 “ Oh, just rubbish,” Ginger answered 
 laughing, “ You’re as clean as a tablet of 
 scented soap, anyway,” says he, first. Then 
 he said, “ Ginger, I’ve known pretty girls 
 with hair not near so nice as yours— not a 
 quarter so much of it.” Another time he 
 asked if I kept a tooth-brush. “ I thought 
 so,” says he, quite loving, “ your teeth’s as 
 white as nuts with the brown skin off : and as 
 regular as a row of tombstones in an under- 
 taker’s window. I never did mind freckles as 
 true as I stand here ...” and stuff like that. 
 But the strongest ever he said was “ Pastry! 
 What’s pastry when a woman don’t know 
 how to make it. I’d as soon eat second hand 
 toast. Yours, Ginger, is like what the angels 
 make, I should say, at Thanksgiving for the 
 little angels.’ ” 
 
 “Did he, really!” said Sarella, feeling 
 quite sure that Larry would not “ scoot.” 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 231 
 
 “ I told him,” Ginger explained calmly, 
 “ that if he didn’t quit such senseless talk he’d 
 never get any more of my pastry. He looked 
 so down that I gave him a slice of pumpkin 
 pie when he was leaving. “The pastry,” says 
 I, “ will mind you of me, and the pumpkin of 
 yourself.” But he got his own back, for he 
 just grinned and said “ Yes, I’ll think o’ 
 them together, Ginger, for the pie and the 
 pumpkin belongs together, don’t they?” 
 Sarella laughed and expresed her belief 
 that after all Jack’s embassy was rather super- 
 fluous. 
 
 “ Maybe so. But I knew he’d hate it, and 
 he deserved it for seeming so unbelieving. If 
 my mother had been lovely I’d have been 
 born plain : it’s not him as should think me 
 too ugly for any young fellow to fancy. I 
 daresay I shouldn’t have decided to take Larry 
 if Miss Mariquita hadn’t sent that message. I 
 was afraid she’d think me a fool. Here’s 
 Larry coming round the corner, looking as if 
 he’d been stealing his mother’s sugar.” 
 
 “ He’s only thinking of your pastry,” said 
 Sarella. “ I’ll slip off. May I be told when 
 it’s all settled?” 
 
 “Yes, certainly, Miss Sarella : and I’m sure 
 
282 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 I wish all that’s best to the Boss and yourself. 
 It’s not everyone could manage him, but you 
 will. Poor Miss Mariquita never could. She 
 was too good.” 
 
 With these mixed compliments Sarella had 
 to content herself. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 When Sarella answered Mariquita’s letter she 
 was to report not only the judicial end of the 
 plumiverous and speckled hens, but the 
 betrothal of Larry Burke and Ginger. 
 “ Nothing,” she wrote, “ but his dread of 
 your displeasure could have overcome his 
 dread of what the other cow-boys would say 
 on hearing of his proposing. After all he has 
 more sense than some sharp fellows who 
 follow at last the advice they know is w r orth 
 least. . . .” 
 
 In her next letter Sarella said. 
 
 “ I am to be made a Catholic on Monday 
 next : so when you’re saying your prayers 
 (and that’s all day) you can be thinking of me. 
 Perhaps I gave in to it first to satisfy your 
 father : but even then I did think 4 if it makes 
 me a bit more like Mariquita he’ll get a better 
 bargain in me.’ I shan’t ever be at all like 
 you, but I shall be of the same Religion as 
 
284 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 you, and I know by this time that it will do 
 me good. It’s all a bit too big for me to 
 understand, but I like what I do understand, 
 and Sister Aquinas says I shall grow into it. 
 Clothes, she says, fit better when they’re worn 
 a bit, and sit easier. She says ‘It has changed 
 you, my dear child, already : you are gentler, 
 and kinder.’ She said another thing ‘ Your 
 husband has been a Catholic all his life, but 
 you will gradually make him a better one. 
 He is a very sensible man, and he can’t see 
 you learning to be a Catholic and not want 
 to learn what it really means himself. He is 
 too honest.’ She likes your father a lot, and 
 never bothers him : ‘ I know,’ she said, 
 
 ‘ you will not bother him either. Some 
 earnest Catholics do bother their men-folks 
 terribly about religious things — and for all the 
 good they seem to do might be only half as 
 earnest and have a better effect.’ I make my 
 First Communion the day after I’m received. 
 And, Mariquita, my dear, we are to be 
 married that day week. Your father will 
 fetch you home, and mind, mind you come. 
 I should never forgive you if you didn’t. 
 Shall I have Ginger for a bridesmaid ? I know 
 some brides do choose ugly ones to make 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 235 
 
 themselves look better. The cowboys (this is 
 a dead secret told me by Ginger) have sub- 
 scribed to give us a wedding-present. I hope 
 it won’t be one of those clocks like black- 
 marble monuments with a round gilt eye in it. 
 I expect the cowboys laugh at both these 
 marriages. But they rather like them. They 
 make a lark : and they never do dislike any- 
 thing they can laugh at. They certainly all 
 look twice as amiably at me when w r e meet 
 about the place since they knew I was going 
 to be married. And Ginger finds them so 
 friendly and pleasant I expect she thinks she 
 might, if she had liked, have married the lot. 
 But that’s different. I daresay you notice 
 that I write more cheerfully now it is settled. 
 Yes, I do. I like him a great deal more than 
 at first. It began when he gave in about what 
 you wanted. I really believe I shall make him 
 happy — and I fancy I think of that more — I 
 mean less of his making me happy. And, 
 Mariquita, it is good of me to have wanted 
 you to be let alone to be a nun if you thought 
 it right : because, oh dear, how I should like 
 you to be living near or at the next range ! 
 Before I got to know you it was just the 
 opposite. I hoped you’d get a husband of 
 
286 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 your own and quit : I did. I thought you’d 
 hate your father marrying again, and (if you 
 stayed on here) would be looking disapproval 
 all day long : and perhaps I thought you 
 would not be best pleased at not getting all 
 his money when he died. (I think when 
 
 people go to Confession they ought to confess 
 things like that. Do they?) Oh, Mariquita, 
 you will be missed. But I’d rather miss you, 
 and know you were being what you felt your- 
 self called away to, than think I had helped 
 to have you interfered with. . . 
 
 Mariquita, reading Sarella’s letter, felt 
 something new in her life, something 
 strangely moving, that filled her eyes and 
 heart with something also new — happy tears. 
 The free gift of tenderness came newly to her ; 
 and, it may be, she had least of all looked for 
 it from Sarella. 
 
 “ ‘ Do people,’ she quoted to herself from 
 Sarella herself, ‘ confess these things?’ I will 
 anyway.” 
 
 It hurt her to think that she who so loved 
 justice and charity, must have been both 
 uncharitable and unjust. 
 
 But can we agree? Had not Sarella’s un- 
 foreseen tenderness been her own gift to her? 
 
MARIQUITA 237 
 
 Had Sarella brought tenderness with her from 
 the East? 
 
 At the stranger’s first coming Mariquita 
 had not judged but felt her, and her feeling 
 (of which she herself knew very little) had been 
 instinctively correct while it lasted. 
 
CHAPTER XXXY. 
 
 Of course Mafriquita kept her promise of 
 being present at her father’s marriage. It 
 had never occurred to her that she could be 
 absent : it was a duty of respect that she owed 
 to him, and a duty of fellow- womanhood that 
 she owed to Sarella. 
 
 It amused her a little to hear that a certain 
 Mrs. Kane was to be present, in a sort of 
 maternal quality, and that Mr. Kane was to 
 give the bride away as a sort of official father. 
 Mrs. Kane might have seen Sarella a dozen 
 times — in the parlour of the convent, which 
 she was much given to frequent. Mr. Kane 
 had, so far as Mariquita was aware, never seen 
 her at all — except at Mass. 
 
 They were Kentuckians who had moved 
 west some twelve years earlier than Sarella 
 herself, and, though they had not made a 
 fortune, were sufficiently well off to be rather 
 leading members of the congregation. Mrs. 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 239 
 
 Kane’s most outstanding characteristic was a 
 genius for organising bazaars, on a scale of 
 ever-increasing importance : the first had 
 
 been for the purchase of a harmonium, the last 
 had been to raise funds for a new wing to the 
 Convent : all her friends had prophesied 
 
 failure for the first, no one had dared predict 
 anything but dazzling success for the last. 
 Mr. Kane was not less remarkable for his 
 phenomenal success in the matter of whist- 
 drives — and raffles. He would raffle the nose 
 off your face if you would let him, and hand 
 over an astonishing sum to the church when he 
 had done it, with the most exquisite satisfaction 
 that the proceeding was not strictly legal. 
 
 Both the Kanes were extremely amusing, 
 and no one could decide which was the more 
 good-natured of the two. Of week-day after- 
 noons Mrs. Kane was quite sumptuously 
 attired, Mr. Kane liked to be rather shabby 
 even on Sundays at Mass, which caused him 
 to be generally reported somewhat more 
 affluent than he really was. He had always 
 been supposed to be “ about fifty,” whereas 
 Mrs. Kane had, ever since her arrival, spoken 
 of herself as “on the sensible side of thirty.” 
 
 At Sarella’s wedding Mrs. Kane’s magni- 
 
240 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 ficence deeply impressed the cowboys ; and 
 Mr. Kane’s elaborate paternity towards the 
 bride, whom he only knew by her dress, would 
 have deceived if it had been possible the very 
 elect ; they were not precisely that and it did 
 not deceive, though it hugely delighted them. 
 
 “ I swear he’s crying /” whispered Pete 
 Rugger to Larry Burke. “ He cried just like 
 that in the play when Mrs. Hooger ran away 
 with her own husband that represented the 
 hero.” 
 
 “ Well,” said Larry, t£ a man can’t help 
 his feelings.” 
 
 He was secretly wondering if Mr. Kane 
 would give away Ginger — he would do it so 
 much better than Jack. 
 
 Mrs. Kane affected no tears. She had the 
 air of serenely parting with a daughter, for 
 her own good, to an excellent, wealthy 
 husband whom she had found for her, and of 
 being ready to do as much for the rest of her 
 many daughters — Mr. and Mrs. Kane were 
 childless. 
 
 Perhaps this attitude on her part, suited 
 better with her resplendent costume than it 
 would have suited her husband’s black attire — 
 which he kept for funerals. 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 241 
 
 Little was lost on the cowboys and they did 
 not fail to note that the gray which of recent 
 years had been invading “ the Boss’s ” hair 
 had disappeared. 
 
 “ In the distance he don’t look a lot older 
 than Gore,” Pete Rugger declared to his 
 neighbour. 
 
 Gore supported Don Joaquin as “ best ” 
 or groomsman. 
 
 It was significant that on Mariquita’s ap- 
 pearance no spoken comment was made by 
 any of the cow-boys, though to each of them 
 she was the most absorbing figure. Her 
 father had fetched her from Loretto three days 
 before the wedding : and at the Convent had 
 been introduced to a learned-looking but 
 agreeable ecclesiastic who was a rector of a 
 college for lay youths. 
 
 Don Joaquin, much interested, had plied 
 the reverend pundit with enquiries con- 
 cerning this seat of learning, not forgetting 
 particular inquisition as to the terms. 
 
 On their conclusion he took notes in writing 
 of all the replies and declared that it sounded 
 exactly what he would choose for his own son. 
 
 “ I would like,” he said, with a simplicity 
 that rather touched the rector, “ that my lad 
 Q 
 
242 MARIQUITA 
 
 should grow up with more education than I 
 ever had.” 
 
 “Your son,” surmised the rector, “ would 
 be younger than his sister?” 
 
 “ He would,” Don Joaquin admitted, 
 without condescending upon particulars. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 When Gore next saw Mariquita in public she 
 herself was dressed as a bride. It was a little 
 more than a year later. After her return to 
 Loretto she remained there about three weeks, 
 at the end of which she went home to the 
 range for a week. Her parents (as Don 
 Joaquin insisted on describing himself and 
 Sarella) had returned from their wedding 
 trip : and she could see that the marriage was 
 a success. The two new servants were 
 installed, and Ginger was now Mrs. Lawrence 
 Burke and absent on her wedding journey. 
 
 Mariquita’s father made more of her than 
 of old, and inwardly resolved to make up to 
 “ her brother ” for any short-comings there 
 might have been in her case. 
 
 Sarella was unfeignedly glad to have her at 
 home, and looked forward sadly to her final 
 departure. Of one thing she was resolved — 
 that Mariquita should be taken all the way to 
 
244 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 her “ Carmel ” in California by both “ her 
 parents.” And, of course, she got her own 
 way. 
 
 The extreme beauty of the Convent and its 
 surroundings, the glory of the climate, the 
 brilliance of its light, the splendour of the blue 
 and gold of sky and hills, half blinded Sarella 
 to the rigour of the life Mariquita was 
 entering — till the moment of actual farewell 
 came. Then her tears fell, far more plentifully 
 than Mr. Kane’s at her own wedding. 
 
 Still she admitted that the nuns were as 
 cheerful as the sky, and wondered if she had 
 ever heard more happy laughter than theirs as 
 they sat on the floor, with Mariquita in their 
 midst, behind the grille in the “ speak-room.’ 
 As a postulant Mariquita did not wear the 
 habit, but only a sort of cloak over her own 
 dress : her glorious hair was not yet cut off. 
 
 Don Joaquin did not see the nuns, as did 
 Sarella, with the curtains of the grille drawn 
 back. It seemed to him that the big spikes 
 of the grille were turned the wrong way, for 
 he could not imagine anyone desiring to get 
 forcibly in. He watched everything, fully 
 content to take all for granted as the regula- 
 tion and proper thing, without particularly 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 245 
 
 understanding any of it. It gave him con- 
 siderable satisfaction to hear that Saint 
 Theresa was a Spaniard, and he thought it 
 sensible of Mariquita to join a Spanish order. 
 He had no misgivings as to her finding the life 
 hard — he did not know in the least what the 
 life was, and made no inquisition ; he had a 
 general idea that women did not feel fastings 
 and so forth. He would have felt it very 
 much himself if he had had to rise with the 
 dawn and go fasting till mid-day, instead of 
 beginning the day with a huge meal of meat. 
 
 The old life at the range, as it had been 
 when Sarella first came, was never resumed. 
 She was determined that its complete isolation 
 should be changed, and she changed it with 
 wonderful rapidity and success. The friendly 
 and kind-hearted Kanes helped her a great 
 deal. They had insisted, at the wedding 
 itself, that the bride and bridegroom should 
 pay them a very early visit, after their return 
 from their wedding-journey. It was paid 
 immediately on their getting back from 
 California, and it lasted several days. During 
 those days their host and hostess took care 
 that they should meet all the leading Catholics 
 of the place, to whom Sarella made herself 
 
246 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 pleasant, administering to them (in her 
 husband’s disconcerted presence) pressing 
 invitations to come out to the range : though 
 they all had autos it was not to be expected 
 that they would come so far for a eup of tea, 
 and they came for a night, and often for two 
 or three nights. Naturally the Kanes came 
 first and they spoke almost with solemnity (as 
 near solemnity as either could attain) of social 
 duty. It was an obligation on all Catholics to 
 hang together, and hanging together obviously 
 implied frequent mutual hospitalities. Don 
 Joaquin had found that the practice of his 
 religion did imply obligations and duties 
 never realized before, and he was a little con- 
 fused as to their relative strictness. On the 
 whole he succumbed to what Sarella intended 
 with a compliance that might have surprised 
 Mariquita had she been there to see. Some 
 of the cow-boys were of the opinion that the 
 old man was breaking. He was only being 
 (not immediately) broken in. A man of 
 little over fifty, of iron constitution, does not 
 “ break,” however old he may appear to five- 
 and-twenty or thirty. The sign that appeared 
 most ominous to these young men was that 
 “the Boss” betrayed symptoms of less rigid 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 247 
 
 stinginess : there was nothing really alarming 
 about the symptoms. Such as they were they 
 were due, not so much to any decay in the 
 patient’s constitution, as to a little awakening 
 of conscience referable, such as it was, to the 
 late-begun practices of confession. Old Jack 
 was made foreman, at an increase of pay by no 
 means dazzling but quite satisfactory to him- 
 self who had not expected any such pro- 
 motion. Larry and Ginger settled, about two 
 miles from the homestead, in a small house 
 which they were permitted by Don Joaquin 
 to build. Two of the cowboys found them- 
 selves wives whom they had first seen in 
 church at Sarella’s wedding : these young 
 ladies, it appeared, had severally resolved that 
 under no circumstances would they marry any 
 but Catholics, and their lovers accepted the 
 position, largely on the ground that a religion 
 good enough for Miss Mariquita would be 
 good enough for them. 
 
 “ Too good,” grimly observed one of their 
 comrades who was not then engaged to marry 
 a Catholic. 
 
 Don Joaquin allowed the two who were to 
 have little places built for themselves on the 
 range. And as the brides were each plentifully 
 
248 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 provided with sisters it seems likely that soon 
 Don Joaquin will have quite a numerous 
 tenantry. It also appears probable that a 
 priest will presently be resident at the range, 
 for one has already entered into correspond- 
 ence with Don Joaquin on the subject. 
 Having recently recovered from a “chest 
 trouble ” he has been advised that the air of 
 the high prairies holds out the best promise of 
 continued life and avoidance of tuberculosis. 
 There is another scheme afoot of which, 
 perhaps, Don Joaquin as yet knows nothing. 
 It began in the active mind of Sister Aquinas, 
 and its present stage consists of innumerable 
 prayers on her part that she may be able to 
 establish out on the range a little hospital, 
 served by nuns, for the resuscitation of 
 patients threatened with consumption. She 
 sees in the invalid priest a chaplain plainly 
 provided as an answer to prayer : Mr. and 
 Mrs. Kane, her confidants, see in the scheme 
 immense occasion for unbridled bazaars and 
 whist drives. All friends of Mr. Kane meet 
 him on their guard, uncertain which of their 
 possessions he may have it in his eye to raffle. 
 Even as I write I hear that another answer to 
 the dear nun’s prayers looms into sight. A 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 249 
 
 widowed sister of her own, wealthy, childless 
 and of profuse generosity writes to her : and 
 the burden of her song is that she would not 
 mind (her chest having always been w r eak) 
 going to the proposed sanatorium herself, at 
 all events for a few years, and bringing with 
 her Doctor Malone : Dr. Malone is of un- 
 paralleled genius in his profession, but tuber- 
 culous, and it is transparently plain that his 
 kind and affluent friend wishes to finance him 
 and remove him to an “anti -tuberculous air.” 
 It seems to me certain that Sister Aquinas’s 
 prayers will very soon be answered, and the 
 sanatorium be a fact. She has, I know, 
 mentally christened it already. “Mariquita,” 
 is to be its name. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 Mariquita’s profession took place fourteen 
 months after her father’s second marriage. 
 Her brother was already an accomplished fact : 
 he was, indeed, six weeks old and present (not 
 alone) on the occasion. He was startlingly 
 like his father, a circumstance not adverse to, 
 his future comeliness as a man, but which 
 made him a little portentous as a baby. Don 
 Joaquin on the day of his birth wrote to the 
 rector of the college whom he had met at 
 Loretto with many additional enquiries. 
 Mariquita first beheld her brother when, for- 
 tunately, his father and her own was not 
 present : for she laughed terribly at the great 
 little black creature with eyes and nose at 
 present much too big. He looked about fifty 
 and had all the solemnity of that distant 
 period of his life. 
 
 “ Isn’t he a thorough Spaniard?” Sarella 
 demanded, pretending to pout discontentedly. 
 But Mariquita saw very clearly that she was 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 251 
 
 as proud of her baby as Don Joaquin him- 
 self. Since his birth Sarella’s letters had 
 been full of him, and she thought of his 
 clothes now. She had persuaded her husband, 
 as a thank-offering for his son, to give a con- 
 siderable piece of ground, in a beautiful situa- 
 tion, not a mile from the homestead, as the 
 site of the future Church, Convent, and 
 Sanatorium. 
 
 ******* 
 
 The beautiful and bright chapel of the 
 Carmelite convent was free of people : two 
 prie-dieus, side by side, had been placed at 
 the entrance of the chancel. Towards these 
 Mariquita, dressed as a bride, walked, leaning 
 on her father’s arm. She had always pos- 
 sessed the rare natural gift of walking beauti- 
 fully. No one in the church had ever seen a 
 bride more beautiful, more radiant, or more 
 distinguished by unlearned grace and dignity. 
 
 Among the congregation, but nearest to 
 the two prie-dieus, knelt Sarella and Mr. 
 Gore. 
 
 Behind their grille the nuns were singing 
 the ancient Latin hymn of invocation to the 
 Holy Ghost. 
 
 Presently the Archbishop in noble words 
 
252 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 set out the Church’s doctrine and attitude 
 concerning “ Holy Religion,” especially in 
 reference to the orders called Contemplative, 
 for no Catholic order of religion can be any- 
 thing but contemplative, in its own degree 
 and fashion. He dwelt upon the thing called 
 Vocation, and the vocation of every human 
 soul to heaven : each by its own road of 
 service, love, and obedience : then upon the 
 more exceptional vocation of some, whereby 
 God calls them to come to Him by roads 
 special and less thronged by travellers to the 
 Golden Gate ; pointing out that the Church, 
 unwavering guardian of Christian liberty, in 
 every age insisted on the freedom of such souls 
 to accept that Divine summons as the rest are 
 free to go to Him by the ways of His more 
 ordinary and usual Providence. He spoke of 
 the Church’s prudence in this as in all else, 
 and of the courses enjoined by her to enable a 
 sound judgment to be made as to the reality 
 of such exceptional vocation : and so of 
 
 postulancy, novitiate, and profession. 
 
 His words ended, the “ bride ” and her 
 father rose from their knees and after (on his 
 part the usual genuflection) and on hers a 
 slow and profound reverence, they turned and 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 258 
 
 walked down the church as they had come, 
 she leaning upon his arm. After them the 
 whole congregation moved out of the chapel, 
 and went behind them to the high, wooden 
 gates behind which was the large garden of 
 the “enclosure.” Grouped before those gates 
 all waited, listening to the nuns slowly 
 advancing towards them from the other side, 
 out of sight, but audible, for they were singing 
 as they came. Slowly the heavy gates opened 
 inwards, and the Carmelites could be seen. In 
 front stood one carrying a great wooden cruci- 
 fix. The faces of none of them could be seen, 
 for their long black veils hung, before and 
 behind, down to the level of their knees, leav- 
 ing only a little of the brown habit visible. 
 
 Mariquita embraced her father, and Sarella, 
 spoke a low word to Gore, who stood on one 
 side of Sarella, went forward with a low 
 reverence towards the Crucifix, kissed its feet, 
 and then turned : with a profound curtsey she 
 greeted those who had gathered to see her 
 entrance into Holy Religion, and took her 
 farewell of “ the world:” the gates closed 
 slowly, and among her sisters she went back 
 to the chapel. 
 
 The congregation returned thither also. 
 
254 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 Many were softly weeping : poor Sarella was 
 crying bitterly. Her husband was not 
 unmoved, but his grave dignity was not 
 broken by tears. Gore could not have spoken 
 but there was no occasion for speech. 
 
 Behind the nun’s grille in the chapel the 
 little community was gathered, Mariquita 
 among them, no longer in her bride’s dress, 
 but in the brown habit without scapular or 
 leathern belt. 
 
 The Archbishop advanced close to the grille 
 and put to her many questions. What did 
 she ask? Profession in the order of holy 
 religion of Mount Carmel. Was this of her 
 own free desire? Yes. Had any coerced or 
 urged her to it? No one. Did she believe 
 that God Himself had called her to it? Yes. 
 And many other questions. 
 
 Then the archbishop blest the scapular, and 
 it was put upon her by her sisters : as in the 
 case of the belt. So with each article of her 
 nun’s dress, sandals and veil. 
 
 Thereafter, upon ashes, she lay upon the 
 ground covered by a Pall, and De Profundis 
 was sung. 
 
 So the solemn rite proceeded to its end. 
 Afterwards the new religious sat in the parlour 
 
MARIQUITA 
 
 255 
 
 of the grille, or “ speak-room,” and the 
 witnesses kept it full for a long time, as in 
 succession they went to talk to her where she 
 sat behind the grille. 
 
 The last of all was Gore. He only went 
 in as the last of the groups came out. 
 
 “ I was afraid you might not come,” 
 Mariquita told him. “Thank you for coming. 
 If you had not come I should have been afraid 
 that you felt it sad. There is nothing sad 
 about it, is there?” 
 
 “ Indeed nothing.” 
 
 There was something in her voice that told 
 him she was gayer than of old : happy she had 
 always been. Though she smiled radiantly she 
 did not laugh as she said. 
 
 “ I know the ceremonies are rather harrow- 
 ing to the lookers-on. (I heard some one 
 sob — dear Sarella, I’m afraid). But not to us. 
 One is not sad because one has been allowed 
 to do the one thing one wanted to do? Is 
 one?” 
 
 “Not when it is a great, good thing like 
 this.” 
 
 “ Ah, how kind you are ! I always told 
 you you were the kindest person I had ever 
 met. Yes the thing is great and good — only 
 
256 
 
 MARIQUITA 
 
 you must help me to do it in God’s own way, 
 in the way He wishes it done. You will not 
 get tired of helping, by your prayers for me, 
 will you ? ’ ’ 
 
 “ Of course I never shall.” 
 
 Presently she said, not laughing now either, 
 but with a ripple like the laughter of running 
 water in her voice, “You can’t think how I 
 like it all : how amusing some of it is ! One 
 has to do ‘ manual labour ’ — washing pots and 
 pans, and cleaning floors : I believe it is sup- 
 posed to be a little humiliating, and meant to 
 keep us humble. And you know how used I 
 am to it. I’m afraid of its making me con- 
 ceited — I do it so much better than the sisters 
 who never did anyhing like that at home. 
 Mother Prioress is always afraid too that I 
 shan’t eat enough, and that I shall say too 
 many prayers. I fell into a pond we have in 
 our garden, and she was terrified, thinking I 
 must be drowned : no one could drown in it 
 without standing on her head : I was trying to 
 get a water-lily, so I fell in and came out 
 frightfully muddy and smelly too 
 You must be kind to Sarella : she is so good, 
 and has been so good to me. I shall never 
 forget what you and she did for me. Write 
 
MARIQUITA 257 
 
 to her if you go away, and tell her all about 
 yourself.” 
 
 4 ‘ What there is to tell ! ’ ’ 
 
 “ Oh, there will be lots. You are not such 
 a bad letter- writer as that . . .” 
 
 So they talked, the small, trivial, kindly talk 
 that belongs to friendship, and showed him 
 that Mariquita was more Mariquita than ever 
 now she was Sister Consuelo. Her father 
 liked the Spanish name, without greatly 
 realizing its reference to Our Lady of Good 
 Counsel. 
 
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