“Oh, as for me, I’m half Spanish, you know.  I’m like a salamander.  Nick’ll come back between half-past two and three—­soon after his lunch.  He might almost as well have stayed with us.  But, of course, as he’s been away from home so long, he wants to have a look around and be sure that everything’s all right for a stranger to see.  I don’t wonder!  I told him we’d meet him at the east gate.  It’s a short cut, and though it isn’t much of a walk for us, and is in shade over half the way, it cuts off more than two miles of bad road for him—­road that’s just being made.  I thought you’d rather like a stroll through the bamboo grove, which everybody admires so much.  The only part of the walk that will be hot is going across a bit of disused pasture land.  But we’ll take green-lined parasols.  I have a lot of them about the house, for visitors.  We ought to start by two-thirty; and by three-fifteen, with the motor, we can be coming in sight of the Lucky Star Gusher, like a huge black geyser.  You know Nick’s land was once part of mine, so his place is no distance, really.  I hope you don’t dislike walking?”

“No, indeed.  I’m very fond of it.  I can easily do ten miles.”

“Well, you will have only a short mile to meet Nick and his motor this afternoon.  I dare say I shall pick up a little by half-past two.  I thought maybe lunch would make me feel better, but it doesn’t.  Just the other way!  I can’t eat.  I’ve got one of the horrid headaches that turn me almost into a lunatic once in a blue moon.”

“I’m so sorry,” said Angela.  “Hadn’t you better send Mr. Hilliard word that we can’t come to-day?  You know, there’s most of to-morrow——­”

“Oh, no,” Carmen broke in hastily.  “I wouldn’t disappoint him for anything in the world.  A cup of black coffee will do me good.”

But apparently it had no such effect.  And at two o’clock Mrs. Gaylor said that she feared she must not venture out, after all, in the hot sun.  If she tried she might faint, and that would be silly.  “I’m so sorry, but you’ll have to go alone,” she finished, “and when I’ve had a little rest, I’ll come after you in a carriage, in time to bring you home.  That will save Nick motoring here and back, and give him a chance to keep his engagement at six, with those men, and no danger of a breakdown with his car.  He might burst a tire on that stony road, you see, and be delayed.  Those men are important to him.”

Angela was genuinely sympathetic, and strove to regret that Mrs. Gaylor could not be with her.  But she could not feel as sorry as she wished to feel.  There was a spice of danger in being alone with Nick, danger that he might take up the thread dropped in the Mariposa Forest—­if, indeed, he really cared to take it up.  That was the question.  Perhaps, even if he loved her, he would not think it best to tell her so under his own roof, where she would have to run away from him to escape, if she did not choose to listen.  Whether he loved her or not, it must come to the same in the end.  But she could not help longing to know the truth.  The one thing she did already know was that she was deliciously frightened, yet glad that she was to see Nick’s ranch without Mrs. Gaylor.