“Really, I wouldn’t have intruded,” said Seagreave in his pleasant English voice.  “I had an idea from your telegram, Gallito, that Hughie was coming with you.  Sha’n’t I go?”

For answer Gallito pushed forward a chair and threw another log upon the fire.  “My daughter is tired,” he said.  “She will soon retire; but when a man has been from home for a fortnight, and in the desert!” he raised his brows expressively, “Pah!  He wishes to hear of everything which has happened during his absence and particularly, Mr. Seagreave, do I wish to talk to you about that lower drift.  Jose tells me that you have examined it.”

Thus urged, Seagreave sat down.  He was tall and slight and fair, so very fair that his age was difficult to guess.  His hair, with a silvery sheen on it, swept in a wing across his forehead, and he had a habit of pushing it back from his brow; his eyes were of a vivid blue, peculiarly luminous, and his features, which were regular, showed a fine finish of modeling.  His age, as has been said, was a matter of conjecture, but judging from his appearance he might have been anywhere from twenty to forty.

“Don’t let me interrupt your game,” he said.  “It is early yet, and if Miss Gallito isn’t too tired, and if she will let me, I will talk to her while you play.”

Jose smiled to himself and picked up the cards.  The game went on.  Seagreave, receiving no encouragement from Pearl, made no attempt at conversation, until at last, stirred by some impulse of curiosity, she lifted her eyes.  It was this question of age she wished to decide.  In that first, quick glance of hers she had taken it for granted that he was twenty, but in a second stolen look she had noted certain lines about the mouth and eyes which added years to his blonde youthfulness.  Then her quick ear had caught Jose’s “Saint Harry,” and to her, who knew many men, those lines about mouth and eyes did not suggest a past of saintship.

Her surreptitious glance encountered that of Seagreave, for he, too, had withdrawn his eyes from the fire for a moment to let his puzzled gaze rest upon her.  He had known vaguely that Gallito had a daughter, and he remembered in the same indefinite way that some one had told him that she was an actress, but, even so, he could not reconcile this—­his mind sought a simile to express her—­this exotic, with Gallito, these two mountain women, a mountain cabin, and an equally unpretentious home in the desert.  She lay listlessly in her chair, a long and slender shape in a dull black gown which fell about her in those statuesque folds which all drapery assumed immediately she donned it; beneath it showed her feet in black satin slippers and the gleam of the satin seemed repeated in her blue-black hair.  Her cheek was unwontedly pale.  A monotone she appeared, half-within and half-without the zone of the firelight; but the individuality of her could not be thus subdued.  It found expression in the concentration of light and color focused in the splendid rings which sparkled on the long, brown fingers of both her hands.