"It is growing late, Mi Primavera," her father said. "If you are to return to the city tonight you must leave soon."
Consuello rose and went into the house with her mother. Don Ygnacio and John stood waiting. Finally, breaking a silence of several minutes, the old man spoke.
"This is the home of my fathers," he said. "All that is left. They counted their land in hundreds of acres. Now only a few acres remain, just as much as you can see. What little is left will go when I go and the Carrillo home will be no more."
John felt the mood of the elderly aristocrat of other days. He stood silent.
"Where you stand Pio Pico once took me, as a child, in his arms. Here we danced and sang and loved and lived and here also will I die."
Consuello and her mother returned and they walked out to the waiting automobile.
"I have never had such a delightful day," John said to her father and mother as they took their seats in the machine. "I thank you—from the bottom of my heart."
"Come often, my boy, the home of the Carrillos is always open to a friend of Mi Primavera," said Don Ygnacio.
They rode in silence for many miles, the automobile humming over the smooth, deserted boulevards almost as bright as day in the moonlight.