Clara, who was in one of her unconscious and innocent moods, simply replied, “I suppose people are always handsome enough when they are happy.”

“Then I ought to be lovely,” said Coronado.  “I am happier than I ever was before.”

“Coronado, you look very well,” observed Clara, turning her eyes on him with a grave expression which rather puzzled him.  “This out-of-door life has done you good.”

“Then I don’t look very well indoors?” he smiled.

“You know what I mean, Coronado.  Your health has improved, and your face shows it.”

Fearing that she was not in an emotional condition to be bewildered and fascinated by a declaration of love, he queried whether he had not better put off his enterprise until a more susceptible moment.  Certainly, if he were without a rival; but there was Thurstane, ready any and every day to propose; it would not do to let him have the first word, and cause the first heart-beat.  Coronado believed that to make sure of winning the race he must take the lead at the start.  Yes, he would offer himself now; he would begin by talking her into a receptive state of mind; that done, he would say with all his eloquence, “I love you.”

We must not suppose that the declaration would be a pure fib, or anything like it.  The man had no conscience, and he was almost incomparably selfish, but he was capable of loving, and he did love.  That is to say, he was inflamed by this girl’s beauty and longed to possess it.  It is a low species of affection, but it is capable of great violence in a man whose physical nature is ardent, and Coronado’s blood could take a heat like lava.  Already, although he had not yet developed his full power of longing, he wanted Clara as he had never wanted any woman before.  We can best describe his kind of sentiment by that hungry, carnal word wanted.

After riding in silent thought for a few rods, he said, “I have lost my good looks now, I suppose.”

“What do you mean, Coronado?”

“They depend on my happiness, and that is gone.”

“Coronado, you are playing riddles.”

“This table-land reminds me of my own life.  Do you see that it has no verdure?  I have been just as barren of all true happiness.  There has been no fruit or blossom of true affection for me to gather.  You know that I lost my excellent father and my sainted mother when I was a child.  I was too young to miss them; but for all that the bereavement was the same; there was the less love for me.  It seems as if there had been none.”

“Garcia has been good to you—­of late,” suggested Clara, rather puzzled to find consolation for a man whose misery was so new to her.

Remembering what a scoundrel Garcia was, and what a villainous business Garcia had sent him upon, Coronado felt like smiling.  He knew that the old man had no sentiments beyond egotism, and a family pride which mainly, if not entirely, sprang from it.  Such a heart as Garcia’s, what a place to nestle in!  Such a creature as Coronado seeking comfort in such a breast as his uncle’s was very much like a rattlesnake warming himself in a hole of a rock.