It is strange that so many men who are morally in a state of decomposition should be, or at least can be, sweet and charming in manner.  During these three days Coronado was delightful; and not merely in this, that he watched over Clara’s comfort, rode a great deal by her side, gathered wild flowers for her, talked much and agreeably; but also in that he poured oil over his whole conduct, and was good to everybody.  Although his natural disposition was to be domineering to inferiors and irascible under the small provocations of life, he now gave his orders in a gentle tone, never stormed at the drivers for their blunders, made light of the bad cooking, and was in short a model for travellers, lovers, and husbands.  Few human beings have so much self-control as Coronado, and so little.  So long as it was policy to be sweet, he could generally be a very honeycomb; but once a certain limit of patience passed, he was like a swarm of angry bees; he became blind, mad, and poisonous with passion.

“Mr. Coronado, you are a wonder,” proclaimed the admiring Aunt Maria.  “You are the only man I ever knew that was patient.”

“I catch a grace from those who have it abundantly and to spare,” said Coronado, taking off his hat and waving it at the two ladies.

“Ah, yes, we women know how to be patient,” smiled Aunt Maria.  “I think we are born so.  But, more than that, we learn it.  Moreover, our physical nature teaches us.  We have lessons of pain and weakness that men know nothing of.  The great, healthy savages!  If they had our troubles, they might have some of our virtues.”

“I refuse to believe it,” cried Coronado.  “Man acquire woman’s worth?  Never!  The nature of the beast is inferior.  He is not fashioned to become an angel.”

“How charmingly candid and humble!” thought Aunt Maria.  “How different from that sulky, proud Thurstane, who never says anything of the sort, and never thinks it either, I’ll be bound.”

All this sort of talk passed over Clara as a desert wind passes over an oasis, bringing no pleasant songs of birds, and sowing no fruitful seed.  She had her born ideas as to men and women, and she was seemingly incapable of receiving any others.  In her mind men were strong and brave, and women weak and timorous; she believed that the first were good to hold on to, and that the last were good to hold on; all this she held by birthright, without ever reasoning upon it or caring to prove it.

Coronado, on his part, hooted in his soul at Mrs. Stanley’s whimsies, and half supposed her to be of unsound mind.  Nor would he have said what he did about the vast superiority of the female sex, had he supposed that Clara would attach the least weight to it.  He knew that the girl looked upon his extravagant declarations as merely so many compliments paid to her eccentric relative, equivalent to bowings and scrapings and flourishes of the sombrero.  Both Spaniards, they instinctively comprehended each other, at least in the surface matters of intercourse.  Meanwhile the American strong-minded female understood herself, it is to be charitably hoped, but understood herself alone.