"It is understood then that you admit my claim to your hand,--for one dance at least? You acknowledge the promise made so many dim years back? You have come across wide, tossing seas and over broad, sun-parched fields to keep the tryst you made with me, a smile upon your face, a shadow in your eyes?"
For answer the girl bowed her head.
"Nay, I must hear it from your very own lips. Is it for this that you have come?"
"Yes." The word came soft as twilight shadows, sweet as Nature's harmony. A long pause preceded the low-breathed monosyllable, the word which fond women love best to speak and which listening lovers thrill, half cold, half hot, at hearing. And when it was spoken and heard came a second silence, even longer than the first; and yet what they had said was begun in badinage, and was finished without serious thought by either man or woman. Dangerous words! dangerous silence! happy time, how oft remembered in later days!
"Did I hear you asking Miss Almsford for a dance, Graham? What ball are you contemplating? I have heard of none unless you mean to invite us all to your tower for a frolic. Be sure you do not leave me out; I have long wished to visit your hermitage."
"If the ladies would so highly honor a lonely dweller in the woods as to allow him the felicity of being their host, be sure, my dear Ferrara, that you shall escort them to my humble abode."
"Really, are you in earnest? I have always wished to see your tower. When shall we come?"
"That is for you to say, Miss Deering. Any day which will suit your convenience will be agreeable to me."
"We will settle it after we return to the Ranch."
Soon after this Mrs. Shallop joined the group, and they all went out and walked on the wide terrace till dinner was served. Here Millicent met Mr. Shallop for the first time. He was a heavy-featured Irishman, with light-blue eyes, overhanging brows, and thick, coarse brown hair. His badly modelled nose had a decided upward tendency, and the broad mouth disclosed sharp, long teeth, like those of an inferior animal. When he smiled he showed the whole set, which gave him a rather ferocious aspect. His face was clean shaven, save for a fringe of whisker stretching from the lobe of the ear to the lower jaw. With a pipe and a shillelah he would have been an excellent specimen of a patron of Donnybrook Fair. On this occasion he wore irreproachable evening dress. His linen was finer than Graham's, and the cut of his collar and pattern of his studs were of a later fashion than those worn by Ferrara. A valet's care had smoothed the rough hair and cared for the ugly hands. One of his peculiarities was to address all ladies as "Marm." His conversation was not unintelligent, and betrayed a keen, sharp mind, which clearly understood those things which came in close contact with it, but whose mental vision was bounded by the physical one. Those things which he had learned by experience he knew absolutely, and he never questioned or theorized on subjects which did not directly touch himself or his own interests. California had been to him a place which held a gold mine, nothing more or less. His history, which he made no effort to conceal, was not an uncommon one. He had come out in '49, among the fevered crowd of gold-seekers drawn from every country, from every station in life, by the loadstone which had been discovered on the banks, of the American River, by James Marshall. He had come to San Francisco in those early days when law and order were not, save when the conscience of the public, stronger and purer in its united power than in the individuals which compose it, was awakened, and hastened to punish a crime by a rude and swift justice. Shallop had built a cabin in which he lived, and in which he sold, when he was networking in the gulches, any articles of food which he was able to procure. When there were no potatoes or bread, he closed the door of his shanty and started off with pick and washing-pan for the gulches. When these staple edibles were to be had, he made a brisk trade in catering to the half-starved miners. It had been said that though Shallop's bread was heavy, it cost nearly its weight in gold. In those days he had wooed and married the widow of a brother miner, one of the few women whose sad lot brought them to the land of disorder and bloodshed. A few weeks only elapsed, before the widowed woman gladly changed her state for the protection of the strong arm of Patrick Shallop, to whom she became deeply attached, with a pathetic love resembling that of a dog for a kind master. The bread grew lighter then, and sometimes the potatoes fed pitiful pale youths who brought no store of gold-dust to pay for them. Patrick Shallop, living in the most magnificent dwelling in the whole length and breadth of California, was sometimes moved to tell of the little cabin where he had brought home his bride on a wet night, borrowing an umbrella to place over the bed to keep the rain from wetting her to the skin. There had been times when things had gone badly with the inmates of the little cabin, and days had passed when the mother's ears were torn with the cries of children hungry for bread. It was at this time that Barbara's father had known the Shallops. Mr. Deering was a delicately bred, handsome young man, who had come with the eager crowd of men all pushing ruthlessly forward to the golden goal, sometimes trampling to death the weaker brothers who fell by the wayside. Sick of a fever, faint and dying, he was plundered of his hard-earned store of gold-dust, and would have been murdered by his robber but for the interposition of Shallop, who stood by to see fair play, and carried the sick man home to his shanty, where the tender nursing of the busy wife saved his life a second time. Adversity makes strange companionships between men; and the friendship between the saloon-keeper and the delicately nurtured youth with the blood of a Puritan ancestry in his veins, was one which lasted through both their lives. By some mining exploits which would hardly bear the light of day, but which were, alas! not more uncommon at that time than at the present day, the Irishman had made a colossal fortune which placed him among the richest men in the world. There could be little sympathy between the two men whom the chances of that wild time had thrown together for the moment, but a cordiality was always felt; and after Mr. Deering's death frequent visits were exchanged between the dwellers of the San Rosario Ranch and the inmates of the most celebrated house on the borders of the Pacific Ocean.