Two rooms at the east end of the house had been arranged for the occupancy of the ranch’s mistress.  When she entered them a slight dismay seized her at their bare appearance and the scantiness of their furniture; but she quickly reflected that the climate was a semi-tropical one, and was moved to appreciation of the well-conceived efforts to conform to it.  The sashes had already been removed from the big windows, and white curtains waved in the Gulf breeze that streamed through the wide jalousies.  The bare floor was amply strewn with cool rugs; the chairs were inviting, deep, dreamy willows; the walls were papered with a light, cheerful olive.  One whole side of her sitting room was covered with books on smooth, unpainted pine shelves.  She flew to these at once.  Before her was a well-selected library.  She caught glimpses of titles of volumes of fiction and travel not yet seasoned from the dampness of the press.

Presently, recollecting that she was now in a wilderness given over to mutton, centipedes and privations, the incongruity of these luxuries struck her, and, with intuitive feminine suspicion, she began turning to the fly-leaves of volume after volume.  Upon each one was inscribed in fluent characters the name of Theodore Westlake, Jr.

Octavia, fatigued by her long journey, retired early that night.  Lying upon her white, cool bed, she rested deliciously, but sleep coquetted long with her.  She listened to faint noises whose strangeness kept her faculties on the alert—­the fractious yelping of the coyotes, the ceaseless, low symphony of the wind, the distant booming of the frogs about the lake, the lamentation of a concertina in the Mexicans’ quarters.  There were many conflicting feelings in her heart—­ thankfulness and rebellion, peace and disquietude, loneliness and a sense of protecting care, happiness and an old, haunting pain.

She did what any other woman would have done—­sought relief in a wholesome tide of unreasonable tears, and her last words, murmured to herself before slumber, capitulating, came softly to woo her, were “He has forgotten.”

The manager of the Rancho de las Sombras was no dilettante.  He was a “hustler.”  He was generally up, mounted, and away of mornings before the rest of the household were awake, making the rounds of the flocks and camps.  This was the duty of the major-domo, a stately old Mexican with a princely air and manner, but Teddy seemed to have a great deal of confidence in his own eyesight.  Except in the busy seasons, he nearly always returned to the ranch to breakfast at eight o’clock, with Octavia and Mrs. Maclntyre, at the little table set in the central hallway, bringing with him a tonic and breezy cheerfulness full of the health and flavour of the prairies.

A few days after Octavia’s arrival he made her get out one of her riding skirts, and curtail it to a shortness demanded by the chaparral brakes.

With some misgivings she donned this and the pair of buckskin leggings he prescribed in addition, and, mounted upon a dancing pony, rode with him to view her possessions.  He showed her everything—­the flocks of ewes, muttons and grazing lambs, the dipping vats, the shearing pens, the uncouth merino rams in their little pasture, the water-tanks prepared against the summer drought—­giving account of his stewardship with a boyish enthusiasm that never flagged.