CHAPTER IX.
It was only the THIRD time they had ever met--did Paul consider that when he thought her cold?
Did he know now why she had not understood him at Rosario?
Did he understand now how calculating and selfish he had seemed to her that night?
Could he look her in the face now--no, he must be quiet--they were so near the house, and everybody could see them!--and say that he had ever believed her capable of making up that story of the Arguellos?
Could he not have guessed that she had some memory of that name in her childish recollections, how or where she knew not?
Was it strange that a daughter should have an instinct of her father?
Was it kind to her to know all this himself and yet reveal nothing?
Because her mother and father had quarreled, and her mother had run away with somebody and left her a ward to strangers--was that to be concealed from her, and she left without a name?
This, and much more, tenderly reproachful, bewildering and sweetly illogical, yet inexpressibly dear to Paul, as they walked on in the gloaming.
More to the purpose, however, the fact that Briones, as far as she knew, did not know her mother, and never before the night at Strudle Bad had ever spoken of her.

Still more to the purpose, that he had disappeared after an interview with the colonel that night, and that she believed always that the colonel had bought him off.

It was not with HER money.

She had sometimes thought that the colonel and he were in confidence, and that was why she had lately distrusted Pendleton.
But she had refused to take the name of Arguello again after that scene, and had called herself only by the name he had given her--would he forgive her for ever speaking of it as she had ?--Yerba Buena.

But on shipboard, at Milly's suggestion, and to keep away from Briones, her name had appeared on the passenger list as Miss Good, and they had come, not to New York, but Boston.
It was possible that the colonel had extracted the information he sent her FROM Briones.