backwards almost tenderly in the direction of Los Cuervos, and then
turned his head towards the embarcadero.

As the afternoon wore on, a creaking, antiquated ox-cart arrived at
Los Cuervos, bearing several articles of furniture, and some tasteful
ornaments from Los Gatos, at the same time that a young Mexican girl
mysteriously appeared in the kitchen, as a temporary assistant to the
decrepit Concha. These were both clearly attributable to Don Jose, whose
visit was not so remote but that these delicate attentions might have
been already projected before Mrs. Tucker had declined them, and she
could not, without marked discourtesy, return them now. She did not wish
to seem discourteous; she would like to have been more civil to this
old gentleman, who still retained the evidences of a picturesque
and decorous past, and a repose so different from the life that was
perplexing her. Reflecting that if he bought the estate these things
would be ready to his hand, and with a woman's instinct recognizing
their value in setting off the house to other purchasers' eyes, she
took a pleasure in tastefully arranging them, and even found herself
speculating how she might have enjoyed them herself had she been able
to keep possession of the property. After all, it would not have been
so lonely if refined and gentle neighbors, like this old man, would have
sympathized with her; she had an instinctive feeling that, in their own
hopeless decay and hereditary unfitness for this new civilization, they
would have been more tolerant of her husband's failure than his own
kind. She could not believe that Don Jose really hated her husband for
buying of the successful claimant, as there was no other legal title.
Allowing herself to become interested in the guileless gossip of the new
handmaiden, proud of her broken English, she was drawn into a sympathy
with the grave simplicity of Don Jose's character, a relic of that true
nobility which placed this descendant of the Castilians and the daughter