It was owing to her reduced circumstances that the proud Doña Maria had received under her roof Marjorie and myself, for she loved not the Americans; but, as she told me artlessly one day, "Only the Americans now have gold. "Once it was not so. We, too, had gold in abundance, but we loved not our gold as the Americans love theirs, to keep in the bank. We loved gold because it gave us joy to buy land, and cattle, and jewels, and lace." Yes, it was simply for our gold that Marjorie and I had been received under the roof of the Del Valles. Still, when once the arrangement had been entered upon, the Doña Maria was all that we could desire as a hostess. Marjorie stole each hour into the hearts of the old grandmother and the proud disappointed daughter, aging so fast under stress of multiplied troubles, that she needed just such an appealing interest as my delicate child to call into action the unselfish side of her noble nature. Before we had lived long at the ranch our lives were running together as smoothly as if we all rejoiced in the same blood. The house of the Doña Maria Del Valle was not the original ranch house, but a smaller adobe, built after many of the broad acres had been bartered away by the taking of imperfect securities, the worthlessness of which the happy-go-lucky owners had failed to comprehend until too late to obviate the consequences. "We understood not the laws and the papers of the Americans," the Doña Maria explained, as we sat, one sunshiny morning, upon the sheltered veranda. "One day we owned all the land in the valley for many miles, the next day we owned not so much, and at last only the little that is left." To me, the fifteen remaining acres appeared most desirable, for I was not then versed in the matter of fruit culture. I did not understand that orange trees differ one from another in point of perfection as widely as do people. It was some time before I learned that in the early settlement of the valley disastrous experiments had been made. Many of the first trees planted had yielded an inferior variety of fruit, not lucrative in a market each year growing more critical, as the country became settled by determined agriculturists, who possessed, not only cash capital, but brains stimulated by college education and practical experience. Such men soon discovered that it was unprofitable to irrigate or nurture for long a tree that was not all that a tree of its kind should be.