“Did I hear him call you Windham?” he inquired, “Inez Windham?”

“Yes, that is my name,” she answered.

“And your father’s?”

“He is Don Roberto Windham of the Engineers,” Inez leaned forward.  “Oh!” her eyes shone with a hope she dared not trust.  “Tell me, quickly, have you news of him?”

“Yes,” said Stanley.  “He is ill, but will recover.  He will soon return.”  His eyes dwelt on the girl in silence, musingly.

“Tell me more!” she pleaded.  “We believed him lost.  Ah, how my mother’s health will mend when she hears this.  We have waited so long....”

“I was with him in the North,” said Stanley.  “Often, sitting at the camp-fire, while the others slept, he told me of his wife, his daughter, and his son, Benito.  In my coat,” he pointed to a garment hanging near the door, “you will find a letter—­” He followed her swift, searching fingers, saw her press the envelope impulsively against her heart.  While she read his eyes were on her dreamily, until at last he closed them with a little sigh.

CHAPTER XI

SAN FRANCISCO IS NAMED

Evening on the Windham rancho.  Far below, across a vast green stretch of meadow sloping toward the sea, the sun sank into crimson canopies of cloud.  It was one of those perfect days which come after the first rains, mellow and exhilarating.  The Trio in the rose arbor of the patio were silent under the spell of its beauty.  Don Roberto Windham, home again, after long months of wandering and hardship, stood beside the chair in which Senora Windham rested against a pillow.  She had mended much since his return, and her eyes as she looked up at him held the same flashing, fiery tenderness which in the long ago had caused her to renounce Castilian traditions and become the bride of an Americano.  At her feet upon a low stool sat her daughter, Inez, and Windham, as he looked down, was a little startled at her likeness to the Spanish beauty he had met and married a generation before.

Conscious of his glance, her eyes turned upward and she held out her hand to him.  “Father, mine,” she said in English, “you have made the roses bloom again in mother’s cheeks.  And in my heart,” she added with a quick, impulsive tenderness.

Robert Windham bent and kissed her wind-tossed hair.  “I think another has usurped me in the latter task.”  He smiled, although not without a touch of sadness.  “Ah, well, Adrian is a fine young fellow.  You need not blush so furiously.”

“I think he comes,” said the Senora Anita, and, unconsciously, her arm went around the girl.  “Is not that his high-stepping mare and his beanpole of a figure riding beside Benito in yon cloud of dust?”

She smiled down at Inez.  “Do not mind your mother’s jesting—­Go now to smooth your locks and place a rose within them—­as I used to do when Don Roberto came.”

Inez rose and made her way into the casa.  She heard a clatter of hoofs and voices.  At the sound of one her heart leaped strangely.