Some three weeks later the little cavalcade came clattering down the red trail into Santa Fe, and with little acclaim made haste to the plaza. Halting before the church, Don Tiburcio uncovered his head, as did his men, and it was thus that Father Filemon saw them. Hope Bragdon was not at the ranchito, he told Don Tiburcio, but here in town, staying with the wife of Don Anabel Lopez and the Señorita Consuelo. She had been very ill; was but just able to sit up now after two months in bed. They took Doren in to see her, Consuelo herself having broken the news gently. Don Tiburcio begged the privilege of taking the boy in, and led Doren up to the bed, brown and rosy as he had never been. Hope opened her arms with a cry and Consuelo ran out, leaving the three together. She almost tumbled over Luis at the door, and pushed him back. “You shan’t see her. You shan’t see her now.” Luis made no protest. He slunk back unhappily. He had seen that the returning party brought Doren, and Doren only. Luis was different. Since Hope’s illness in his father’s house he had grown nervous, furtive. There was a time when they thought that Hope would not get well at all. She might die at any moment; the doctor bled her once and seriously considered doing it again if she did not revive, but Felicita, protesting violently, rushed out and brought an old Indian woman who gave the girl a brew which brought her out of her swoon, and thereafter fed her on broths made of the liver of young veal. Whether it was genuine love and distress that he felt as Hope lay dying, or merely frustration, the situation was a potent worker of change in Luis. Even Don Anabel could not fail to note the difference in his son. He meditated bitterly upon the irony of both his children being infatuated with these blond foreigners. It had been an act of charity to take the girl from the ranch house. Consuelo had ridden out one day to see the Yankee girl and had found her tossing on the bed with fever, thin to the point of emaciation. Doña Katarina had tried earlier to induce Hope to come in to town and stay with her, but she would not leave the place. She had an idea that Doren might return, might get away somehow and find his way back, and would not know where to look for her. If he came he would be tired out; perhaps ready to die of exhaustion. Doña Katarina had gone with Consuelo, and together they secured an ox cart and with Doña Gertrudis’s permission had installed the unconscious girl in Consuelo’s own room.