the back, "and we are cousins. So much the better! For my part I am heartily glad to meet a relation. Now--come--let us be off to Desolada. You were on your way there, no doubt. Well! you shall have a cordial welcome. The best I can offer. You know that the Spaniards always call their house 'their guests' house.' And my house shall be yours. For as long as you like to make it so."

"You are very good," Julian said haltingly, feeling, too, that he was no longer master of himself, no longer possessed of all that ease which he had, until to-day, imagined himself to be in full possession of. "Very good indeed. And what you say is the case. I was on my way--I--had a desire to see the place in which your and my father lived."

"You shall see it, you shall be most welcome. And," Sebastian continued, "you will find it big enough. It is a vast rambling place, half wood, half brick, constructed originally by Spanish settlers, so that it is over a hundred years old. The name is a mournful one, yet it has always been retained. And once it was appropriate enough. There was scarcely another dwelling near it for miles--as a matter of fact, there are hardly any now. The nearest, which is a place called 'La Superba,' is five miles farther on."

They went out together now to the front of the inn--Julian observing that still the negro slept on in the entrance-hall and still the dog slept on in the sun outside--and here Sebastian, finding the good-looking horse, began to untether it, while Julian did the same for his mustang. They were the only two animals now left standing in the shade thrown by the house, since all the men--including he who had stayed last and listened to their conversation--were gone. The girl, however, still remained, and to her Sebastian spoke, bidding her make her way through the bypaths of the forest to Desolada and state that he and his guest were coming.

"Who is she?" asked Julian, feeling that it was incumbent on him to evince some interest in this new-found "cousin's" affairs; while, as was not surprising, he really felt too dazed to heed much that was passing around him. The astonishment, the bewilderment that had fallen on him owing to the events of the last half-hour, the startling information he had received, all of which tended, if it did anything, to disprove every word that George Ritherdon had uttered prior to his death--were enough to daze a man of even cooler instincts than he possessed.

"She," said Sebastian, with a half laugh, a laugh in which contempt was strangely discernible, "she, oh! she's 

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