“We will, if you please, go direct to my excellent relative’s,” was the reply.

Aunt Maria held her head straight up, as if stiff-neckedly refusing to go there, but made no opposition.

Coronado had meditated everything and decided everything.  It would not do to go to a hotel, because that might lead to a suspicion that he knew all the while about the death of Munoz.  His plan was to drive at once to the old man’s place, demand him as if he expected to see him, express proper surprise and grief over the funereal response, put the estate as soon as possible into Clara’s hands, become her man of affairs and trusted friend, and so climb to be her husband.  He was anxious; during all his perils in the desert he had never been more so; but he bore the situation heroically, as he could bear; his face revealed nothing but its outside—­a smile.

“My dear cousin,” he presently said, “when I once fairly set you down in your home, you will owe me, in spite of all my blunders, a word of thanks.”

“Coronado, I shall owe you more than I ever can repay,” she replied frankly, without remembering that he wanted to marry her.  The next instant she remembered it, and her face showed the first blush that had tinted it for two months.  He saw the significant color, and turned away to conceal a joy which might have been perilous had she observed it.

Immediately on landing he proceeded to carry out his programme.  He took a hack, drove the ladies direct to the house of Munoz, and there went decorously through the form of learning that the old man was dead.  Then, consoling the sorrowful and anxious Clara, he hurried to the best hotel in the city and made arrangements for what he meant should be an impressive scene, the announcement of her fortune.  He secured fine rooms for the ladies, and ordered them a handsome lunch, with wine, etc., all without regard to expense.  The girl must be perfectly comfortable and under a sense of all sorts of obligations to him when she received his coup de theatre.

He was not so preoccupied but that he quarelled with his coachman about the hack hire and dismissed him with some disagreeable epithets in Spanish.  Next he took a saddle-horse, as being the cheapest conveyance attainable, and cantered off to find the executors of Munoz, enjoying heartily such stares of admiration as he got for his splendid riding.  In an hour he returned, found the ladies in their freshest dresses, and complimented them suitably.  At this very moment his anguish of anxiety and suspense was terrible.  When Clara should learn that she was a millionaire, what would she do?  Would she throw off the air of friendliness which she had lately worn, and scout him as one whom she had long known as a scoundrel?  Would all his plots, his labors, his perils, and his love prove in one moment to have been in vain?  As he stood there smiling and flattering, he was on the cross.

“But I am talking trifles,” he said at last, fairly catching his breath.  “Can you guess why I do it?  I am prolonging a moment of intense pleasure.”