He supposed that he did outshine him.  A man of thirty always believes that he appears to better advantage than a man of twenty-three or four.  He trusts that he has more ideas, that he commits fewer absurdities, that he carries more weight of character than his juvenile rival.  Coronado was far more fluent than Thurstane; had a greater command over his moods and manners, and a larger fund of animal spirits; knew more about such social trifles as women like to hear of; and was, in short, a more amusing prattler of small talk.  There was a steady seriousness about the young officer—­something of the earnest sentimentality of the great Teutonic race—­which the mercurial Mexican did not understand nor appreciate, and which he did not imagine could be fascinating to a woman.  Knowing well how magnetic passion is in its guise of Southern fervor, he did not know that it is also potent under the cloak of Northern solemnity.

Unluckily for Coronado, Clara was half Teutonic, and could comprehend the tone of her father’s race.  Notwithstanding Thurstane’s shyness and silences, she discovered his moral weight and gathered his unspoken meanings.  There was more in this girl than appeared on the surface.  Without any power of reasoning concerning character, and without even a disposition to analyze it, she had an instinctive perception of it.  While her talk was usually as simple as a child’s, and her meditations on men and things were not a bit systematic or logical, her decisions and actions were generally just what they should be.

Some one may wish to know whether she was clever enough to see through the character of Coronado.  She was clever enough, but not corrupt enough.  Very pure people cannot fully understand people who are very impure.  It is probable that angels are considerably in the dark concerning the nature of the devil, and derive their disagreeable impression of him mainly from a consideration of his actions.  Clara, limited to a narrow circle of good intentions and conduct, might not divine the wide regions of wickedness through which roved the soul of Coronado, and must wait to see his works before she could fairly bring him to judgment.

Of course she perceived that in various ways he was insincere.  When he prattled compliments and expressions of devotion, whether to herself or to others, she made Spanish allowance.  It was polite hyperbole; it was about the same as saying good-morning; it was a cheerful way of talking that they had in Mexico; she knew thus much from her social experience.  But while she cared little for his adulations, she did not because of them consider him a scoundrel, nor necessarily a hypocrite.

Coronado found and improved opportunities to talk in asides with Clara.  Thurstane, the modest, proud, manly youngster, who had no meannesses or trickeries by nature, and had learned none in his honorable profession, would not allow himself to break into these dialogues if they looked at all like confidences.  The more he suspected that Coronado was courting Clara, the more resolutely and grimly he said to himself, “Stand back!” The girl should be perfectly free to choose between them; she should be influenced by no compulsions and no stratagems of his; was he not “an officer and a gentleman”?