“Did you ask him?” Uncle Henry went on, paying not the slightest heed to her surprised glance.

“Ask who what?” Lucia asked.  She was not a little interested now.  She came back into the room.

“Ask him about marryin’—­you know.  I gotter find out because Hardy’s comin’.”  No speech could have been plainer and balder.  “Did you?”

Lucia was nonplussed at the old man’s crude directness.  “Yes—­I mean no.  I don’t remember.”

“Don’t remember!” Uncle Henry yelled.  “But that’s what I left you here for!  We had it all framed up!  Why didn’t you?”

Lucia’s head drooped a bit.  “We were talking about something else.”

The crabbed man was inflamed by this reply.  “What was you talkin’ about that was so gol darned important that you forgot the only important thing there was to talk about?...  Well?” he cried, when she said nothing.  “By gollies!  I remember now!  You was the gal he wouldn’t ask to marry him because he didn’t have no money!” He did not notice that his nephew had come back from the other room just in time to hear this last remark.  He went on relentlessly to Lucia:  “And me like a poor boob forgettin’ all about it until now!” He suddenly saw Gilbert, and, not a whit abashed, turned on him.  “So that’s why you won’t marry Hardy’s daughter!  I see it all now!  I’ve been as blind as a hoot-owl!”

There came the sound of a Ford stopping outside, and footsteps approached up the path that led to the adobe.

“It’s all right, Lucia,” Gilbert said, and she went upstairs, almost weeping.  Then he whirled about and glared at his uncle.  “It’s a good thing—­no, I don’t know what I’m saying.  You’re an invalid, or I’d strike you, despite your years, Uncle Henry.  For heaven’s sake, can’t you learn to mind your own business?”

“I ain’t got any.  You robbed me of it!” the old man flamed back.  “Now I’ll mind yours for a change.  Make a monkey out o’ me, will you, gol darn you!”

As he was starting for the door, he bumped directly into Jasper Hardy and his daughter Angela and the ubiquitous “Red.”  The trio had come over in the Ford.

Hardy, tall and thin, wore a funereal black coat, despite the heat, and a somber dark Stetson hat.  He must have been fifty or more.  His skin looked bloodless, and his eyes still had that hard, pale look.  It was difficult to trust eyes like those.  He ambled, rather than walked, and his lean, lanky legs would have made him a fortune on the stage.  It was difficult to believe, as everyone always said, that the lovely little Angela, with her bright black eyes and her rose-red cheeks, was the daughter of this sinister man.  She was as attractive as a rose;—­a typical frontier maiden, romantic, emotional, peppery when occasion demanded—­just the kind to take the fancy of an honest soul like “Red.”  His eyes followed her wherever she went, as ever.  She could not sit down or stand up or open her delicate lips but that he stared at her, hoping he could be