So Don Joaquin sighed and had to go on.
"Yes! It would be very lonely for me, dependent as I am for society on Mariquita."
Here Gore, with some inward amusement, could not refrain from accusing his possible father-in-law of some hypocrisy; for he was sure the elderly gentleman would miss his daughter as little as any father could miss his child.
"Certainly," he said aloud, "it is hard to think how the range would get on without her."
No doubt, her absence would be hard to fill in the matter of usefulness, and Gore was inclined to doubt whether Sarella would even wish to fill it. He was pretty sure that that young woman would refuse to work as her cousin had worked.
"It must get on without her," Don Joaquin agreed, not without doubt, "when her time comes for moving to a home of her own."
Still Gore refused to "rise."
"We must be prepared for that," Mariquita's father went on, refilling his pipe. "She is grown up. It is natural she should be thinking of her own future—"
Gore suddenly felt angry with him, instead of being merely amused. To him it appeared a profanation of the very idea of Mariquita, to speak of her as indulging in surmises and calculations concerning her own matrimonial chances.
"It would not," he said, "be unnatural—but I am sure her mind is given to no such thoughts."