The young girl was too unversed in the ways of the world to notice that Marshall Thurston was under the influence of wine. He was too experienced a toper to show any signs of unsteadiness on his feet, but all the same there was undoubted tipsiness in his leering side-glances and occasional slurring of his words. Of this Merle in her maidenly innocence was supremely unconscious, nor did she dream that the very sparkle of her eyes was completing the intoxication of wine fumes. Once she cast a look up the hill and asked herself whether the wizard of the red-tiled tower had his spy-glass on La Siesta and was even then quietly surveying the scene in the gardens. The thought made her uncomfortable; she felt sure that her kind friend, Mr. Robles, would not look with favor on her condescending to show even the slightest attention to one whose evil ways of living were notorious. Suddenly she came to a halt, close beside a little clump of oleander trees laden with rich blossoms. “I am sorry I must leave you now,” she said, quite abruptly. “Leave me?” stammered Thurston. “What for?” “I have other things to attend to,” she replied. “Oh, I say, Miss Farnsworth”—the inebriate as he spoke made a gesture of appeal—“I hope you are not angry with me. If that scalawag of a fellow Willoughby told you I said anything disrespectful of you the other day, he is a demed liar—that’s what he is, a derned liar, and a poor penniless beggar as well, whom my father’s going to fire off the ranch.” Merle stood speechless. She stepped back when Thurston advanced with outstretched hands. “The truth of the whole matter is,” he rambled on, with growing incoherence, “I am madly in love with you myself. That’s what I am, and I’m going to have you, too.” And he grabbed her fiercely and attempted to draw her to him. Merle screamed both in fear and in repulsion as she tried to push him away. Just then, from among the oleanders, rushed Tia Teresa. The old duenna came like a cyclone. Her eyes blazed with anger. Grasping the young libertine by the collar of his coat, she pulled him madly from the now half-fainting girl. Then, whirling him around, she rushed him, with the strength and ferocity of a tigress defending her whelps, down the gravelled path and flung him bodily over the low retaining wall along the embankment that separated the rose gardens from the public road. She spat upon his prostrate figure below and rained down on him a torrent of imprecations in the Spanish tongue. It was all over in one brief minute. When young Thurston picked himself up, it was to see the aged fury half-leading, half-carrying Merle away in the direction of the house. “The hell cat,” he murmured.