We must allot a few more words of description to this Don Carlos Coronado.  Let no one expect a stage Spaniard, with the air of a matador or a guerrillero, who wears only picturesque and outlandish costumes, and speaks only magniloquent Castilian.  Coronado was dressed, on this spring morning, precisely as American dandies then dressed for summer promenades on Broadway.  His hat was a fine panama with a broad black ribbon; his frock-coat was of thin cloth, plain, dark, and altogether civilized; his light trousers were cut gaiter-fashion, and strapped under the instep; his small boots were patent-leather, and of the ordinary type.  There was nothing poetic about his attire except a reasonably wide Byron collar and a rather dashing crimson neck-tie, well suited to his dark complexion.

His manner was sometimes excitable, as we have seen above; but usually he was like what gentlemen with us desire to be.  Perhaps he bowed lower and smiled oftener and gestured more gracefully than Americans are apt to do.  But there was in general nothing Oriental about him, no assumption of barbaric pompousness, no extravagance of bearing.  His prevailing deportment was calm, grave, and deliciously courteous.  If you had met him, no matter how or where, you would probably have been pleased with him.  He would have made conversation for you, and put you at ease in a moment; you would have believed that he liked you, and you would therefore have been disposed to like him.  In short, he was agreeable to most people, and to some people fascinating.

And then his English!  It was wonderful to hear him talk it.  No American could say that he spoke better English than Coronado, and no American surely ever spoke it so fluently.  It rolled off his lips in a torrent, undefiled by a mispronunciation or a foreign idiom.  And yet he had begun to learn the language after reaching the age of manhood, and had acquired it mainly during three years of exile and teaching of Spanish in the United States.  His linguistic cleverness was a fair specimen of his general quickness of intellect.

Mrs. Stanley had liked him at first sight—­that is, liked him for a man.  He knew it; he had seen that she was a person worth conciliating; he had addressed himself to her, let off his bows at her, made her the centre of conversation.  In ten minutes from the entrance of Coronado Mrs. Stanley was of opinion that Clara ought to go to California by way of the isthmus, although she had previously taken the overland route for granted.  In another ten minutes the matter was settled:  the ladies were to go by way of New Orleans, Panama, and the Pacific.

Shortly afterward, Coronado and Thurstane took their leave; the Mexican affable, sociable, smiling, smoking; the American civil, but taciturn and grave.

“Aha!  I have disappointed the young gentleman,” thought Coronado as they parted, the one going to his quartermaster’s office and the other to Garcia’s house.