was twenty-eight years old, and he had never been in love, although,
since his twenty-first birthday, his father and Don Juan Sepulvida, of
the Rancho Carpajo, had planned a merger of their involved estates
through the simple medium of a merger of their families. Anita
Sepulvida was a beauty that any man might be proud of; her blood was of
the purest and best, but, with a certain curious hard-headedness (the
faint strain of Scotch in him, in all likelihood), Don Mike had
declined to please the oldsters by paying court to her.

"There's sufficient of the _mañana_ spirit in our tribe now, even with
the Celtic admixture," he had declared forcibly. "I believe that like
begets like in the human family as well as in the animal kingdom, and
we know from experience that it never fails there. An infusion of pep
is what our family needs, and I'll be hanged if I relish the job of
rehabilitating two decayed estates for a posterity that I know could no
more compete with the Anglo-Saxon race than did their ancestors."

Whereat, old Don Miguel, who possessed a large measure of the Celtic
instinct for domination, had informed Don Mike that the latter was too
infernally particular. By the blood of the devil, his son's statement
indicated a certain priggishness, which he, Don Miguel, could not
deplore too greatly.

"You taught me pride of race," his son reminded him. "I merely desire
to improve our race by judicious selection when I mate. And, of
course, I'll have to love the woman I marry. And I do not love Anita
Sepulvida."

"She loves you," the old don had declared bluntly.