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 almost 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 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. Besides,
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 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 conceived, 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 watchful; not rendered more
appreciative of his daughter by the stranger's appreciation, and not
inclined by that appreciation more favorably to the stranger himself.
That Gore was not warmly welcomed by the cowboys 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 horseman. 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.