"There is the tavern kept by Mac. You may be able to retain a room there alone, if no other women stop over." "Share a room with strangers? But Don Rafael offered--" "Don Rafael has only several adobes here, where the vaqueros eat and sleep--neither he nor his brother has lived here as a regular thing; when they do, they share the house of the major-domo, who has an Indian wife. The only privacy Don Rafael could assure you of would be to give you the key of the Mission." "That graveyard! I must say you are not very brotherly, amigo--I learned some more words of Spanish on the way down! Well, if I must go to the awful tavern, I must! Do you suppose that villanous-looking black-and-tan in the serape will carry my boxes into the hotel? You've not said one civil word, Keith! Are Teddy and I to do the best we can without your blessing?" she asked, mockingly. He looked at her slowly from head to foot, and back to her innocent wide-open blue eyes. "I congratulate you," he said, briefly. "I will see that your belongings are taken to your room. The gentleman in the serape chances to be a Mexican Don, not accustomed to carting bandboxes." "You are not very cordial in your congratulations," she observed, as if determined to break down his cold unconcern,--to make him _say_ something. "No, I'm not," he agreed, tersely. "If Teddy had given me any idea of it, you know he would not have been a married man now." "Oh, I knew you would be jealous, no matter whom he married," she replied; "I told him so!" "So I supposed. But if you want to secure a room alone, you'd better not delay. Apartments are rather at a premium in San Juan." He walked with her past the admiring group of prominent citizens toward the patio of the inn. Several of the men swept sombreros to the earth as she passed. The cousin of Don Eduardo was a lady they must show special deference to, even if she had been ugly, which she certainly was not. Most of them envied the tall, rather good-looking fellow swinging along by her side, but he did not seem as happy in the privilege as others would have been. Alvara, seeing himself forgotten for Don Eduardo's pretty blonde cousin, smiled a little, and continued his walk alone to the corral. "She make him forget,--but she is not the woman," he said, shrewdly. Mrs. Bryton surveyed the coarse furnishings of the adobe with disgust as she was led to the one room where she could secure sleeping accommodation. It contained three beds with as many different-colored spreads, queer little pillows, and drawn-work on one towel hanging on a nail. The floor had once been tiled with square Mission bricks; but many were broken, some were gone, and the empty spaces were so many traps for unwary feet. Names of former occupants were scratched in the whitewashed wall. There was no window, and but one door opening on the patio and to be fastened from within by a wooden bar. "But this--there must be something better than this!" she exclaimed.