She spoke pleasantly and playfully, yet with a certain nervous tension of voice and manner that seemed to illustrate her theory.  At least, Clarence, in quick sympathy with her slightest emotion, was touched by it.  There is no more insidious attraction in the persons we admire, than the belief that we know and understand their unhappiness, and that our admiration for them is lifted higher than a mere mutual instinctive sympathy with beauty or strength.  This adorable woman had suffered.  The very thought aroused his chivalry.  It loosened, also, I fear, his quick, impulsive tongue.

Oh, yes; he knew it.  He had lived under this whip of air and sky for three years, alone in a Spanish rancho, with only the native peons around him, and scarcely speaking his own tongue even to his guardian.  He spent his mornings on horseback in fields like these, until the vientos generales, as they called them, sprang up and drove him nearly frantic; and his only relief was to bury himself among the books in his guardian’s library, and shut out the world,—­just as she did.  The smile which hovered around the lady’s mouth at that moment arrested Clarence, with a quick remembrance of their former relative positions, and a sudden conviction of his familiarity in suggesting an equality of experience, and he blushed.  But Mrs. Peyton diverted his embarrassment with an air of interested absorption in his story, and said:—­

“Then you know these people thoroughly, Mr. Brant?  I am afraid that we do not.”

Clarence had already gathered that fact within the last few days, and, with his usual impulsive directness, said so.  A slight knitting of Mrs. Peyton’s brows passed off, however, as he quickly and earnestly went on to say that it was impossible for the Peytons in their present relations to the natives to judge them, or to be judged by them fairly.  How they were a childlike race, credulous and trustful, but, like all credulous and trustful people, given to retaliate when imposed upon with a larger insincerity, exaggeration, and treachery.  How they had seen their houses and lands occupied by strangers, their religion scorned, their customs derided, their patriarchal society invaded by hollow civilization or frontier brutality—­all this fortified by incident and illustration, the outcome of some youthful experience, and given with the glowing enthusiasm of conviction.  Mrs. Peyton listened with the usual divided feminine interest between subject and speaker.

Where did this rough, sullen boy—­as she had known him—­pick up this delicate and swift perception, this reflective judgment, and this odd felicity of expression?  It was not possible that it was in him while he was the companion of her husband’s servants or the recognized “chum” of the scamp Hooker.  No.  But if he could have changed like this, why not Susy?  Mrs. Peyton, in the conservatism of her sex, had never been quite free from fears of her adopted daughter’s hereditary instincts; but, with this example before her, she now took heart.  Perhaps the change was coming slowly; perhaps even now what she thought was indifference and coldness was only some abnormal preparation or condition.  But she only smiled and said:—­