Mariquita had, after all, only one quarter Spanish, and one Indian; whereas with him it was a quarter of half and half. She had, in actual blood, a whole half that was pure Saxon, for her mother's New England family was of pure English descent. Yet Mariquita seemed far more purely Spanish than her father; he himself could trace nothing of her mother in her, and in her character was nothing Indian but her patience.
From her mother personally she inherited nothing, but through her mother she had certain characteristics that helped to make her very incomprehensible to Don Joaquin, though he did not know it.
Gore, who studied her with far more care and interest, because to him she seemed deeply worth study, did not himself feel compelled to remember her triple strain of race. For to him she seemed splendidly, adorably simple. He was far from falling into Sarella's shallow mistake of calling that simplicity "stupidity"; to him it appeared a sublimation of purity, rarely noble and fine. That she was book-ignorant he knew, as well as that she was life-ignorant; but he did not think her intellectually narrow, even intellectually fallow. Along what roads her mind moved he could not, by mere study of her, discover; yet he was sure it did not stagnate without motion or life.
About a month after the arrival of Sarella, one Saturday night at supper, that young person observed that Mr. Gore's place was vacant.
Mariquita must equally have noted the fact, but she had said nothing.
"Isn't Mr. Gore coming to his supper?" Sarella asked her.
Don Joaquin thought this out of place. His daughter's silence on the subject had pleased him better.
"I don't know," Mariquita answered, glancing towards her father.
"No," he said; "he has ridden down to Maxwell."