He meant what he said.  He had spoken quickly, impulsively, but with the perfect understanding in his own mind that his proposition meant the complete abandonment of his rendezvous with Susy.  Mrs. Peyton was astounded and slightly stirred with his earnestness, albeit unaware of all it implied.

“It’s a great temptation, Mr. Brant,” she said, with a playful smile, which dazzled Clarence with its first faint suggestion of a refined woman’s coquetry; “but I’m afraid that Mr. Peyton would think me going mad in my old age.  No.  Go on and enjoy your gallop, and if you should see those giddy girls anywhere, send them home early for chocolate, before the cold wind gets up.”

She turned, waved her slim white hand playfully in acknowledgment of Clarence’s bared head, and moved away.

For the first few moments the young man tried to find relief in furious riding, and in bullying his spirited horse.  Then he pulled quickly up.  What was he doing?  What was he going to do?  What foolish, vapid deceit was this that he was going to practice upon that noble, queenly, confiding, generous woman? (He had already forgotten that she had always distrusted him.) What a fool he was not to tell her half-jokingly that he expected to meet Susy!  But would he have dared to talk half-jokingly to such a woman on such a topic?  And would it have been honorable without disclosing the whole truth,—­that they had met secretly before?  And was it fair to Susy?—­dear, innocent, childish Susy!  Yet something must be done!  It was such trivial, purposeless deceit, after all; for this noble woman, Mrs. Peyton, so kind, so gentle, would never object to his loving Susy and marrying her.  And they would all live happily together; and Mrs. Peyton would never be separated from them, but always beaming tenderly upon them as she did just now in the garden.  Yes, he would have a serious understanding with Susy, and that would excuse the clandestine meeting to-day.

His rapid pace, meantime, had brought him to the imperceptible incline of the terrace, and he was astonished, in turning in the saddle, to find that the casa, corral, and outbuildings had completely vanished, and that behind him rolled only the long sea of grain, which seemed to have swallowed them in its yellowing depths.  Before him lay the wooded ravine through which the stagecoach passed, which was also the entrance to the rancho, and there, too, probably, was the turning of which Susy had spoken.  But it was still early for the rendezvous; indeed, he was in no hurry to meet her in his present discontented state, and he made a listless circuit of the field, in the hope of discovering the phenomena that had caused the rancho’s mysterious disappearance.  When he had found that it was the effect of the different levels, his attention was arrested by a multitude of moving objects in a still more distant field, which proved to be a band of wild horses.  In and out among them, circling