A First Family of Tasajara by Bret Harte Read Free Book Online

and exasperating to Grant since in the young girl's speech and manner there was not the slightest trace of coquetry or playfulness. He could not help saying a little bitterly: "I don't think that any one would imagine from your manner that you were receiving a declaration."
    "We cannot part otherwise without the risk of greater cruelty."
    "Thank you,-and I suppose it does not make any matter to Clem who quiets mine," she said, with provoking eyes and a toss of her head worthy of the spirited animal she was riding.
    "She thinks you quite capable of managing yourself and even others," he replied with a playful glance at Shipley, who was riding somewhat stiffly on the other side.
    They were approaching the first undulation of the russet plain they had emerged upon,-an umbrageous slope that seemed suddenly to diverge in two defiles among the shaded hills. Grant had given a few words of practical advice to Mrs. Ashwood, and shown her how to guide her mustang by the merest caressing touch of the rein upon its sensitive neck. He had not been sympathetically inclined towards the fair stranger, a rich and still youthful widow, although he could not deny her unquestioned good breeding, mental refinement, and a certain languorous thoughtfulness that was almost melancholy, which accented her blonde delicacy. But he had noticed that her manner was politely reserved and slightly constrained towards the Harcourts, and he had already resented it with a lover's instinctive loyalty. He had at first attributed it to a want of sympathy between Mrs. Ashwood's more intellectual sentimentalities and the Harcourts' undeniable lack of any sentiment whatever. But there was evidently some other innate antagonism. He was very polite to Mrs. Ashwood; she responded with a gentlewoman's courtesy, and, he was forced to admit, even a broader comprehension of his own merits than the Harcourt girls had ever shown, but he could still detect that she was not in accord with the party.
    "As CONVENTIONAL, Mr. Grant; always excepting this lovely creature beneath me, whom I can't make out and who doesn't seem to care that I should. There! look! I told you so!"
    When she succeeded at last in urging her mustang forward again she determined to take the right-hand canyon and trust to being either met or overtaken. A more practical and less adventurous nature would have waited at the point of divergence for the return of some of the party, but Mrs. Ashwood was, in truth, not sorry to be left to herself and the novel scenery for a while, and she had no doubt but she would eventually find her way to the hotel at San Mateo, which could not be far away, in time for luncheon.
    "Yes, you took the road to Crystal Spring. It's just down there in the valley, not more than a mile. You'd have been there now if you hadn't turned off at the woods."
    "Wonderful!-and all along the ridge, looking down that defile!"
    "Yes, and that first glimpse of the valley through the Gothic gateway of rocks!"
    "Certainly,-and the perfect clearness of everything."
    They were both gravely nodding and shaking their heads with sparkling eyes and brightened color, looking not at each other but at the far landscape vignetted through a lozenge-shaped wind opening in the trees. Suddenly Mrs. Ashwood straightened herself in the saddle, looked grave, lifted the reins and apparently the ten years with them that had dropped from her. But she said in her easiest well-bred tones, and a half sigh, "Then I must take the road back again to where it forks?"
    "You would meet them sooner," he said thoughtfully.
    This was quite enough for Mrs. Ashwood. "I think I'll rest this poor horse, who is really tired," she, said with charming hypocrisy, "and stop at the hotel."
    She saw his face brighten. Perhaps he was the son of the hotel proprietor, or a youthful partner himself. "I suppose you live here?" she suggested gently. "You seem to know the place so well."
    His frank face, incapable of disguise, changed suddenly. "No,"