“Is the tragedy at this end or the other?” thought Talbot, as he walked up and down the Mission corridor on his fortieth birthday—­“that I could not have her when I was mad about her, or that I can have her now and don’t want her?”

He knew that the Senora was lonesome in her big house and would have welcomed a companion, but he knew also that the desire moved sluggishly in the depths of her lazy mind.  If he were willing, well and good.  If otherwise, it mattered not much.

His Indian servant cantered up with his horse, he gave a last regretful glance at the cool corridor of the Mission, and then went out into the hot sun.

He was only a stone heavier than in the old days, but he rode more slowly, for this his favorite mare was no longer young.  His day for breaking in bucking mustangs was over, and he liked an animal that would behave itself as became the four-footed companion of his years.

The road through the pale green cotton-woods and willows that wooded the banks of the river—­as dry as the heavens—­was almost cold, and refreshingly dim; but when the bed and its fringe turned abruptly to the south his way led for five sweltering miles through sun-burned fields and over hills as yellow as polished gold.  The sky looked like dark-blue metal in which a hole had been cut for a lake of fire.  The heat it emptied quivered visibly in the parched fields, and the mountains swam in a purple haze.  Talbot had a grape-leaf in his hat, and the suns of California had baked his complexion long since, but he wished that his birthday occurred in winter, as he had wished many a time before.

It was an hour and a half before he rode into the grounds surrounding Casa Ortega.  Then he spurred his horse, for here were many old oak-trees and the atmosphere was twenty degrees cooler.  A Mexican servant met him, and he dismounted and walked the few remaining yards to the house.  He sighed as he remembered that Herminia, the last of the girls to marry, had been there to kiss him on his last birthday.  He would gladly have had all four back again, and now they had passed out of his life forever.

The Casa Ortega was a very long adobe house one story in height and one room deep, except in an ell where a number of rooms were bunched together.  The Senora had it whitewashed every year, and the red tiles on the roof renewed when necessary; therefore it had none of the pathetic look of old age peculiar to the adobe mansions of the dead grandees.

A long veranda traversed the front, supported by pillars and furnished with gayly painted chairs; but it was empty, and Talbot entered the sala at once.  It was a long room, severely furnished in the old style, and facing the door was a painting of Delfina Carillo.  Talbot rarely allowed his eyes to wander to this portrait.  Had he dared he would have asked for its removal.  The grass was long above the grave, but there were such things as ghosts.