Up over the sandy river-bed came the two strangers, and Mariquita stood
awaiting them.
The woman might be thirty, and was, she perceived (to whom a saddle was
easier than a chair) unused to riding. She was a pretty woman, with a
sort of foolish amiability of manner that might mean nothing. The man
was younger--perhaps by three years, and rode as if he had always known
how to do it, but without being saddle-bred, without living chiefly on
horseback.
His companion was much aware of his being handsome, but Mariquita did
not think of that. She, however, liked him immediately--much better than
she liked the lady. The lady was not, in fact, quite a lady; but the
young man was a gentleman; and perhaps Mariquita had never known one.
"Is this," inquired the blonde lady--pointing, though inaccurately, as
if to indicate Mariquita's home, "where Mr. Xeres lives, please?"
She pronounced the X like the x's in Artaxerxes.
"Certainly. He is my father."
"Then your mother is my Aunt Margaret," said the lady in the smart
clothes that looked so queer on an equestrian.
"My mother unfortunately is dead," Mariquita informed her, with a
simplicity that made the wide-open blue eyes open wider still, and
caused their owner to decide that the girl was "awfully Spanish."
Miss Sarah Jackson assumed (with admirable readiness) an expression of
pathos.
"How very sad! I do apologize," she murmured, as if the decease of her
aunt were partly her fault.
The young man was amused--not for the first time--by his
fellow-traveller: but he did not show it.
"You couldn't help it," said Mariquita.
("How very Spanish!" thought her cousin.)
"Of course you did not know," the girl added, "or you would not have
said anything to hurt me. And my mother's death happened five years
ago."
"Not _really_!" cried the deceased lady's niece. "How wholly
unexpected!"
"It wasn't very sudden," Mariquita explained. "She was ill for three
months."
"My father was quite unaware of it--entirely so. He died, in fact, just
about that time. And Aunt Margaret and he were (so unfortunately!)
hardly on terms. Personally I always (though a child) had the strongest
affection for Aunt Margaret. I took her part about her marriage. Papa's
_own_ second marriage struck me as less defensible."
"_My_ father only married once," said Mariquita; "he is a widower."
"Oh, quite so! I wish mine had remained so. My stepmother--but we all
have our faults, no doubt. We did _not_ live agreeably after her third
marriage--" (Mariquita was getting giddy, and so, perhaps, was Miss
Jackson's fellow-traveller.)
"I could not, in fact, live," that lady serenely continued, with a smile
of lingering sweetness, "and finally we differed completely. (Not
noisily, on my part, nor roughly but irrevocably.) Hence my resolve to
turn to Aunt Margaret, and my presence here--blood _is_ thicker than
water, when you come to think of it."
"I met Miss Jackson at ----," her fellow-traveller explained, "and we
made acquaintance--"
"Introduced by Mrs. Plosher," Miss Jackson put in again with singular
sweetness. "Mrs. Plosher's boarding-house was recommended to me by two
ministers. Mr. Gore was likewise her guest, and coming, as she was
aware, to your father's."
Don Joaquin, besides the regular cowboys, had from time to time taken a
sort of pupil or apprentice, who paid instead of being paid. Mariquita
had not been informed that this Mr. Gore was expected.
"So," Mr. Gore added, "I begged Miss Jackson to use one of my horses,
and I have been her escort."
"So coincidental!" observed that lady, shaking her head slightly.
"Though really--now I find my aunt no longer presiding here--I
_really_----"