Ortega and Delfina had jogged along very comfortably.  She was an exemplary wife, a devoted mother, and as excellent a housekeeper as became her traditions.  He made a kind and indulgent husband, and if neither found much to say to the other, their brief conversations were amiable.  Enrique developed no wit with the years, but he was always a courteous host and played a good game of billiards, besides taking a mild interest in the affairs of the nation.  John soon fell into the habit of spending two nights a week at the Rancho de los Olivos, and never failed to fill his pockets with sweets for the little girls, who preferred him to their father.

And his love!  He used to fancy it was buried somewhere in the mausoleum of flesh which had built itself about Delfina Carillo.  She weighed two hundred pounds, and her black hair and fine teeth were the only remnants of her splendid beauty.  Her face was large and brown, and although she retained her dignity of carriage and moved with the old slow grace, she looked what she was, the Spanish mother of many children.

The change was gradual, and brought no pang with it.  John’s memory was a good one, and sometimes when it turned to his youth and the one passion of his life, he felt something like a sob in his soul, a momentary echo of the old agony.  But it was only an echo; he had outgrown it all long since.  He sometimes wondered that he loved no other woman, why his ambition to have an aristocratic wife had died with his first passion; and concluded that the intensity of his nature had worn itself out in that period of prolonged suffering, and that he was incapable of loving again.  And the experience had satisfied him that marriage without love would be a poor affair.  Once in a while, after leaving the plain coffee-colored dame who filled the doorway as she waved him good-bye, he sighed as he recalled the exquisite creature of his youth.  But these sighs grew less and less frequent, for not only was the grass high above that old grave in his heart and he a busy and practical man, but the Senora Ortega had become the most necessary of his friends.  What she lacked in brain she made up in sympathy, and she had developed a certain amount of intelligence with the years.  It became his habit to talk to her of all his ambitions and plans, particularly after the death of Enrique, when they had many uninterrupted hours together.

Upon Ortega’s death Talbot took charge of the estate at once, and into the particulars of her handsome income it never occurred to the widow to inquire.  One by one the girls married, and Talbot dowered them all.  They were pretty creatures, and John loved them, for each had in her face a morsel of Delfina Carillo’s lost beauty; and if they recalled the pain of his youth they recalled its sweetness too.  The Senora recalled neither.

For the last year she had been quite alone.  Two of her daughters lived in the city of Mexico.  One had married a Spanish Consul and returned with him to Spain.  The other lived in San Francisco, and as soon as domestic affairs would permit intended to visit her sisters.  Talbot, when at home, called on the Senora once a week and always carried a novel or an illustrated paper in his saddle-bag.