“Yes,” said Dona Jacoba, indifferently.  “He is not ugly, but much too dark.  His mother was an Indian.  He is no husband, with all his leagues, for any Californian of pure Castilian blood.”

II

Elena had gone up to her room, and would have locked the door had she possessed a key.  As it was, she indulged in a burst of tears at the prospect of marrying an Englishman, then consoled herself with the thought that her best-beloved brother would be with her in a few hours.

She bathed her face and wound the long black coils about her shapely head.  The flush faded out of her white cheeks, and her eyelids were less heavy.  But the sadness did not leave her eyes nor the delicate curves of her mouth.  She had the face of the Madonna, stamped with the heritage of suffering; a nature so keenly capable of joy and pain that she drew both like a magnet, and would so long as life stayed in her.

She curled herself in the window-seat, looking down the road for the gray cloud of dust that would herald her brother.  But only black flocks of crows mounted screaming from the willows, to dive and rise again.  Suddenly she became conscious that she was watched, and her gaze swept downward to the corral.  A stranger stood by the gates, giving orders to a vaquero but looking hard at her from beneath his low-dropped sombrero.

He was tall, this stranger, and very slight.  His face was nearly as dark as an Indian’s, but set with features so perfect that no one but Dona Jacoba had ever found fault with his skin.  Below his dreaming ardent eyes was a straight delicate nose; the sensuous mouth was half parted over glistening teeth and but lightly shaded by a silken mustache.  About his graceful figure hung a dark red serape embroidered and fringed with gold, and his red velvet trousers were laced, and his yellow riding-boots gartered, with silver.

Elena rose quickly and pulled the curtain across the window; the blood had flown to her hair, and a smile chased the sadness from her mouth.  Then she raised her hands and pressed the palms against the slope of the ceiling, her dark upturned eyes full of terror.  For many moments she stood so, hardly conscious of what she was doing, seeing only the implacable eyes of her mother.  Then down the road came the loud regular hoof-falls of galloping horses, and with an eager cry she flung aside the curtain, forgetting the stranger.

Down the road, half hidden by the willows, came two men.  When they reached the rancheria, Elena saw the faces:  a sandy-haired hard-faced old Scotsman, with cold blue eyes beneath shaggy red brows, and a dark slim lad, every inch a Californian.  Elena waved her handkerchief and the lad his hat.  Then the girl ran down the stairs and over to the willows.  Santiago sprang from his horse, and the brother and sister clung together kissing and crying, hugging each other until her hair fell down and his hat was in the dust.