"How charmingly candid and humble!" thought Aunt Maria. "How different
from that sulky, proud Thurstane, who never says anything of the sort, and
never thinks it either, I'll be bound."

All this sort of talk passed over Clara as a desert wind passes over an
oasis, bringing no pleasant songs of birds, and sowing no fruitful seed.
She had her born ideas as to men and women, and she was seemingly
incapable of receiving any others. In her mind men were strong and brave,
and women weak and timorous; she believed that the first were good to hold
on to, and that the last were good to hold on; all this she held by
birthright, without ever reasoning upon it or caring to prove it.

Coronado, on his part, hooted in his soul at Mrs. Stanley's whimsies, and
half supposed her to be of unsound mind. Nor would he have said what he
did about the vast superiority of the female sex, had he supposed that
Clara would attach the least weight to it. He knew that the girl looked
upon his extravagant declarations as merely so many compliments paid to
her eccentric relative, equivalent to bowings and scrapings and flourishes
of the sombrero. Both Spaniards, they instinctively comprehended each
other, at least in the surface matters of intercourse. Meanwhile the
American strong-minded female understood herself, it is to be charitably
hoped, but understood herself alone.

Coronado did not hurry his courtship, for he believed that he had a clear
field before him, and he was too sagacious to startle Clara by overmuch
energy. Meantime he began to be conscious that an influence from her was
reaching his spirit. He had hitherto considered her a child; one day he
suddenly recognized her as a woman. Now a woman, a beautiful woman
especially, alone with one in the desert, is very mighty. Matches are made
in trains overland as easily and quickly as on sea voyages or at quiet