The party was to be on the night of the 24th, and Isabel did not see Gwynne again until the evening of the same day. Judge Leslie went to Santa Barbara to spend the holidays with his son, and his pupil to Burlingame and Menlo Park for a week. After the polo and various other sports at the former resort, with a set that bore an outline resemblance to the leisure class of his own country, the gay life at the Club and the multitude of pretty girls always flitting amid compact masses of flowers, he found the now unfashionable borough of Menlo Park somewhat dull; although he had good snipe-shooting on the marsh with his host, Mr. Trennahan. The whole valley, however, had a peculiar charm for him; when riding alone past the fields of ancient oaks with the great mountains on either side, almost a sense of possession. For all this magnificent and richly varied sweep of land, now cut up into a few large estates and an infinite number of small ones, into towns, and villages, hamlets, and even cities, had once been the Rancho El Pilar, and the property of his Mexican ancestor, Don Jose Argueello. He knew that in those old days it must have looked like a vast English park, and he felt some resentment that his ancestors had not had the wit to hold fast to it until his time came to inherit. Mrs. Trennahan's father, Don Roberto Yorba, had bought a square mile from one of the Argueello heirs, and a few rich men of his time had followed his example; and slept in their country-houses during six months of the year while their women yawned the days away, deriving their principal solace in contemplation of their unchallenged exclusiveness. Stray members of those old families were left, and were, if anything, more exclusive than their parents, disdaining the light-hearted people of Burlingame, unburdened with traditions. This was still the set that never even powdered, faithful to the ancient code that it was not respectable, and who spent the greater part of the year in the country, finding their pleasures in the climate--soporific--excellent old Chinese or Spanish cooks, and in reminiscences of the time when the fine estates had not been cut up into little suburban homesteads for heaven only knew whom.