Charles V. to Don Vincente Robles, of Andalusia, of pious and ascetic
memory, it had commended itself to Judge Peyton, of Kentucky, a modern
heretic pioneer of bookish tastes and secluded habits, who had bought it
of Don Vincente's descendants. Here Judge Peyton seemed to have
realized his idea of a perfect climate, and a retirement, half-studious,
half-active, with something of the seignioralty of the old slaveholder
that he had been. Here, too, he had seen the hope of restoring his
wife's health--for which he had undertaken the overland emigration--more
than fulfilled in Mrs. Peyton's improved physical condition, albeit
at the expense, perhaps, of some of the languorous graces of ailing
American wifehood.

It was with a curious recognition of this latter fact that Judge Peyton
watched his wife crossing the patio or courtyard with her arm around the
neck of her adopted daughter "Suzette." A sudden memory crossed his mind
of the first day that he had seen them together,--the day that he had
brought the child and her boy-companion--two estrays from an emigrant
train on the plains--to his wife in camp. Certainly Mrs. Peyton was
stouter and stronger fibred; the wonderful Californian climate had
materialized her figure, as it had their Eastern fruits and flowers, but
it was stranger that "Susy"--the child of homelier frontier blood and
parentage, whose wholesome peasant plumpness had at first attracted
them--should have grown thinner and more graceful, and even seemed to
have gained the delicacy his wife had lost. Six years had imperceptibly
wrought this change; it had never struck him before so forcibly as on
this day of Susy's return from the convent school at Santa Clara for the
holidays.

The woman and child had reached the broad veranda which, on one side of
the patio, replaced the old Spanish corridor. It was the single modern