They were both gravely nodding and shaking their heads with sparkling eyes and brightened color, looking not at each other but at the far landscape vignetted through a lozenge-shaped wind opening in the trees. Suddenly Mrs. Ashwood straightened herself in the saddle, looked grave, lifted the reins and apparently the ten years with them that had dropped from her. But she said in her easiest well-bred tones, and a half sigh, “Then I must take the road back again to where it forks?”
“Oh, no! you can go by Crystal Spring. It's no further, and I'll show you the way. But you'd better stop and rest yourself and your horse for a little while at the Springs Hotel. It's a very nice place. Many people ride there from San Francisco to luncheon and return. I wonder that your party didn't prefer it; and if they are looking for you,—as they surely must be,” he said, as if with a sudden conception of her importance, “they'll come there when they find you're not at San Mateo.”
This seemed reasonable, although the process of being “fetched” and taking the five miles ride, which she had enjoyed so much alone, in company was not attractive. “Couldn't I go on at once?” she said impulsively.
“You would meet them sooner,” he said thoughtfully.
This was quite enough for Mrs. Ashwood. “I think I'll rest this poor horse, who is really tired,” she, said with charming hypocrisy, “and stop at the hotel.”
She saw his face brighten. Perhaps he was the son of the hotel proprietor, or a youthful partner himself. “I suppose you live here?” she suggested gently. “You seem to know the place so well.”
“No,” he returned quickly; “I only run down here from San Francisco when I can get a day off.”
A day off! He was in some regular employment. But he continued: “And I used to go to boarding-school near here, and know all these woods well.”
He must be a native! How odd! She had not conceived that there might be any other population here than the immigrants; perhaps that was what made him so interesting and different from the others. “Then your father and mother live here?” she said.
His frank face, incapable of disguise, changed suddenly. “No,” he said simply, but without any trace of awkwardness. Then after a slight pause he laid his hand—she noticed it was white and well kept—on her mustang's neck, and said, “If—if you care to trust yourself to me, I could lead you and your horse down a trail into the valley that is at least a third of the distance shorter. It would save you going back to the regular road, and there are one or two lovely views that I could show you. I should be so pleased, if it would not trouble you. There's a steep place or two—but I think there's no danger.”