lieutenant acting as quartermaster of the department, who had met her
heretofore in New York, who had seemed delighted to welcome her to Santa
Fé, and who now called on her nearly every day. Might it not be that
Lieutenant Thurstane would want to make her Mrs. Thurstane, and would have
power granted him to induce her to consent to the arrangement? Clara was
sufficiently a woman, and sufficiently a Spanish woman especially, to
believe in marriage. She did not mean particularly to be Mrs. Thurstane,
but she did mean generally to be Mrs. Somebody. And why not Thurstane?
Well, that was for him to decide, at least to a considerable extent. In
the mean time she did not love him; she only disliked the thought of
leaving him.

While these two women had been talking and thinking, a lazy Indian servant
had been lounging up the stairway. Arrived on the roof, he advanced to La
Señorita Clara, and handed her a letter. The girl opened it, glanced
through it with a flushing face, and cried out delightedly, "It is from my
grandfather. How wonderful! O holy Maria, thanks! His heart has been
softened. He invites me to come and live with him in San Francisco. _O
Madre de Dios!_"

Although Clara spoke English perfectly, and although she was in faith
quite as much of a Protestant as a Catholic, yet in her moments of strong
excitement she sometimes fell back into the language and ideas of her
childhood.

"Child, what are you jabbering about?" asked Aunt Maria.

"There it is. See! Pedro Muñoz! It is his own signature. I have seen
letters of his. Pedro Muñoz! Read it. Oh! you don't read Spanish."