The emigrants were often deceived by these freaks of nature. Beheld from a distance, it seemed impossible that they should not be ruins, the monuments of some Cyclopean race. Aunt Maria, in particular, discovered casas grandes and casas de Montezuma very frequently.
"There is another casa," she would say, staring through her spectacles (broken) at a butte three hundred feet high. "What a people it must have been which raised such edifices!"
And she would stick to it, too, until she was close up to the solid rock, and then would renew the transforming miracle five or ten miles further on.
During this long and marvellous journey Coronado renewed his courtship. He was cautious, however; he made a confidant of his friend Aunt Maria; begged her favorable intercession.
"Clara," said Mrs. Stanley, as the two women jolted along in one of the lumbering wagons, "there is one thing in your life which perhaps you don't suspect."
The girl, who wanted to hear about Thurstane all the time, and expected to hear about him, asked eagerly, "What is it?"
"You have made Mr. Coronado fall in love with you," said Aunt Maria, thinking it wise to be clear and straightforward, as men are reputed to be.
The young lady, instantly revolting from the subject, made no reply.
"I think, Clara, that if you take a husband—and most women do—he would be just the person for you."
Clara, once the gentlest of the gentle, was perfectly angelic no longer. She gave her relative a stare which was partly intense misery, but which had much the look of pure anger, as indeed it was in a measure.