This was a poor substitute for those brief, happy glimpses of the home circle which had so charmed him, but he accepted it stoically.

He wandered over the old house, from which the perfume of domesticity seemed to have evaporated, yet, notwithstanding Mrs.
Peyton's playful permission, he never intruded upon the sanctity of the boudoir, and kept it jealously locked.
He was sitting in Peyton's business room one morning, when Incarnacion entered.

Clarence had taken a fancy to this Indian, half steward, half vacquero, who had reciprocated it with a certain dog-like fidelity, but also a feline indirectness that was part of his nature.

He had been early prepossessed with Clarence through a kinsman at El Refugio, where the young American's generosity had left a romantic record among the common people.

He had been pleased to approve of his follies before the knowledge of his profitless and lordly land purchase had commended itself to him as corroborative testimony.