I was quite friendless and unknown when I left San Francisco for the mines, at the time you entered the convent as Yerba Buena." She smiled, and made a slight impulsive gesture, as if she would have drawn nearer to him, but checked herself, still smiling, and without embarrassment.

It may have been a movement of youthful camaraderie, and that occasional maternal rather than sisterly instinct which sometimes influences a young girl's masculine friendship, and elevates the favored friend to the plane of the doll she has outgrown.

As he turned towards her, however, she rose, shook out her yellow dress, and said with pretty petulance:-- "Then you must go so soon--and this your first and last visit as my guardian ?" "No one could regret that more than I," looking at her with undefined meaning.
"Yes," she said, with a tantalizing coquetry that might have suggested an underlying seriousness.

"I think you HAVE lost a good deal.
Perhaps, so have I.

We might have been good friends in all these years.