“Yes,” said Mrs. McClosky, with ostentatious archness, “I reckon Susy and I understand your position here, and you’ve got a good berth of it.  But we won’t trouble you much on Mrs. Peyton’s account, will we, Susy?  And now she and me will just take a look around the shanty,—­it is real old Spanish anteek, ain’t it?—­and sorter take stock of it, and you young folks will have to tear yourselves apart for a while, and play propriety before me.  You’ve got to be on your good behavior while I’m here, I can tell you!  I’m a heavy old ‘doo-anna.’  Ain’t I, Susy?  School-ma’ms and mother superiors ain’t in the game with me for discipline.”

She threw her arms around the young girl’s waist and drew her towards her affectionately, an action that slightly precipitated some powder upon the black dress of her niece.  Susy glanced mischievously at Clarence, but withdrew her eyes presently to let them rest with unmistakable appreciation and admiration on her relative.  A pang shot through Clarence’s breast.  He had never seen her look in that way at Mrs. Peyton.  Yet here was this stranger, provincial, overdressed, and extravagant, whose vulgarity was only made tolerable through her good humor, who had awakened that interest which the refined Mrs. Peyton had never yet been able to touch.  As Mrs. McClosky swept out of the room with Susy he turned away with a sinking heart.

Yet it was necessary that the Spanish house servants should not suspect this treason to their mistress, and Clarence stopped their childish curiosity about the stranger with a careless and easy acceptance of Susy’s sudden visit in the light of an ordinary occurrence, and with a familiarity towards Mrs. McClosky which became the more distasteful to him in proportion as he saw that it was evidently agreeable to her.  But, easily responsive, she became speedily confidential.  Without a single question from himself, or a contributing remark from Susy, in half an hour she had told him her whole history.  How, as Jane Silsbee, an elder sister of Susy’s mother, she had early eloped from the paternal home in Kansas with McClosky, a strolling actor.  How she had married him and gone on the stage under his stage name, effectively preventing any recognition by her family.  How, coming to California, where her husband had become manager of the theatre at Sacramento, she was indignant to find that her only surviving relation, a sister-in-law, living in the same place, had for a money consideration given up all claim to the orphaned Susy, and how she had resolved to find out “if the poor child was happy.”  How she succeeded in finding out that she was not happy.  How she wrote to her, and even met her secretly at San Francisco and Oakland, and how she had undertaken this journey partly for “a lark,” and partly to see Clarence and the property.  There was no doubt of the speaker’s sincerity; with this outrageous candor there was an equal obliviousness of any indelicacy in her conduct towards Mrs. Peyton that seemed hopeless.  Yet he must talk plainly to her; he must say to her what he could not say to Susy; upon her Mrs. Peyton’s happiness—­he believed he was thinking of Susy’s also—­depended.  He must take the first opportunity of speaking to her alone.