"Now you have Sarella. It would be different."
"Oh, yes; if she wished to go on living here—"
"If she went away to live somewhere else you could go with her."
Mariquita did not see that that would be necessary, but she did not say so. She was not aware that her father was endeavoring to habituate her mind to the permanence of Sarella's connection with herself.
"Of course," he said casually, "you might marry—at any time."
"I never thought of that," the girl answered, and he saw clearly that she never had thought of it. Gore would, he perceived, not have her for the asking; might have a great deal of asking to do, and might not succeed after much asking.
It was not so clear to him that Gore himself was as well aware of that as he was.
That she had never had any thoughts of marriage pleased him, partly because he would not have liked Gore to get what he wanted, so easily, and partly because it satisfied his notion of dignity in her—his daughter. It was really his own dignity in her he was thinking of.
All the same, now that he knew she was not thinking of marrying the handsome stranger, he felt more clearly that (if Gore's "conditions" were suitable) the marriage might suit him—Don Joaquin.
"There are," he observed sententiously, "only two ways for women."