“I hope you mean to have lunch with me here, Mr. Hilliard?” she said.

He looked up, his eyes asking if she really wanted him, or if politeness dictated the invitation.  Hers gave no cue, so he did the simplest and most direct thing, which was to him the most natural thing.

“I should like to, very much,” he said.  “But you’ve found friends.  I could come back afterward, and take you around Santa Barbara, unless——­”

“One of the friends was glad when she heard you being invited,” Theo Dene broke in.  “And the other friends are so new, Mrs. May hasn’t met them yet.  You shall be introduced all together in a bunch.”

Of course, at that Nick came up the steps and joined Angela.  He had a curious feeling as if he ought to be defending her from something; and at the same time a sensation of relief when he heard her once again called “Mrs. May.”  “Princess” was only a sort of pet name, no doubt.  That was what he had hoped when the word caught his startled attention.  He would not like to have her turn into a real princess.  An angel she was for him, and might be, without seeming hopelessly remote somehow; but the pedestal of a princess was cold as a block of marble.

The poster-simile did not occur to Nick; but he thought that the red-haired girl with the self-conscious eyes, standing beside Mrs. May, was like a coloured lithograph in a magazine, compared with a delicate painting in a picture gallery, such as he loved to go and see in San Francisco.  Miss Dene’s peculiar attraction, strong for many men, left him cold, although he might have felt it if he had never seen Angela.

“I’m travelling with Mrs. Harland, and her brother, Mr. Falconer, in his private car,” Theo explained.  She turned to them.  “Mrs. May won’t mind my claiming her as a friend I hope.  She was immensely nice to me in Rome.  And we’ve met in London, too.  I don’t know why I was surprised to see her.  Every one comes to this country.  And Mr. Hilliard, perhaps, you both know?”

“We have met,” said John Falconer, whom Nick had praised yesterday as the “typical” man of California.  He put out his hand, and Nick took it, pleased and somewhat surprised by the recognition.  For he was in his own eyes an insignificant person compared to John Falconer, who had done things worth doing in the world.

Angela remembered Nick’s eulogy of the man.  He was about forty, as tall as Hilliard, though built more heavily.  Nick was clean shaven, and Falconer wore a close-cut brown beard, which gave him somewhat the air of a naval officer, though his face was not so deeply tanned.  His features were strong, and behind his clear eyes thoughts seemed to pass as clouds move under the surface of a deep lake.  Such a man was born to be a leader.  No one could look at him and not see that.

Mrs. Harland, his sister, who—­as Nick was aware—­kept house and entertained for Falconer, was as like him as a very feminine woman can be like an extremely masculine man; and, in fact, they were twins.  Ralph Harland, an Englishman, who had owned a California ranch, was dead; and when his widow was not in Europe she stayed with her brother.