We must say a word or two concerning the past of this young lady.
Twenty-five years previous a New Yorker named Augustus Van Diemen, the
brother of that Maria Jane Van Diemen now known to the world as Mrs.
Stanley, had migrated to California, set up in the hide business, and
married by stealth the daughter of a wealthy Mexican named Pedro Muñoz.
Muñoz got into a Spanish Catholic rage at having a Yankee Protestant
son-in-law, disowned and formally disinherited his child, and worried her
husband into quitting the country. Van Diemen returned to the United
States, but his wife soon became homesick for her native land, and, like a
good husband as he was, he went once more to Mexico. This time he settled
in Santa Fé, where he accumulated a handsome fortune, lived in the best
house in the city, and owned haciendas.

Clara's mother dying when the girl was fourteen years old, Van Diemen felt
free to give her, his only child, an American education, and sent her to
New York, where she went through four years of schooling. During this
period came the war between the United States and Mexico. Foreign
residents were ill-treated; Van Diemen was sometimes a prisoner, sometimes
a fugitive; in one way or another his fortune went to pieces. Four months
previous to the opening of this story he died in a state little better
than insolvency. Clara, returning to Santa Fé under the care of her
energetic and affectionate relative, found that the deluge of debt would
cover town house and haciendas, leaving her barely a thousand dollars. She
was handsome and accomplished, but she was an orphan and poor. The main
chance with her seemed to lie in the likelihood that she would find a
mother (or a father) in Aunt Maria.

Yes, there was another sustaining possibility, and of a more poetic
nature. There was a young American officer named Thurstane, a second