As the marriage could not take place without delay, Don Joaquin did not wish it to be unreservedly announced; the general inhabitants of the range might guess what they chose, but they were not at present to be informed. "Mariquita may tell Gore," he explained to Sarella, "that is a family matter." "And I am sure she will not tell him unless you order her to," said Sarella; "she does not think of him in that light." "What light?" demanded Don Joaquin irritably. "As one of the family," Sarella replied, without any irritation at all. Her placidity of temper was likely to be one of her most convenient endowments. "I shall give her to understand," said Don Joaquin, "that there is no restriction on her informing Mr. Gore." Sarella shrugged her pretty shoulders and made no comment. Mariquita took her father's intimation as an order and obeyed, though surprised that he should not, if he desired Mr. Gore to know of his approaching marriage, tell him himself. Possibly, she thought, her father was a little shy about such a subject. Mr. Gore received her announcement quite coolly, without any manifestation of surprise. It had not, as Don Joaquin had hoped it might, the least effect of hurrying his own steps. "Am I," he inquired, "supposed to show that I have been told?" "Oh, I think so." So that night when they were alone, after the others had gone to their rooms, Gore congratulated his host. "Thank you! You see," said Don Joaquin, assuming a tone of pathos that sat most queerly on him, "as time goes on, I should be very lonely." He shook his head sadly, and Gore endeavored to look duly sympathetic. "Sarella," the older man proceeded, "could not stop here--if she were not my wife--after Mariquita had left us." Gore, who perfectly understood Mariquita's father and his diplomacy, would not indulge him by asking if his daughter were, then, likely to leave him. So Don Joaquin sighed and had to go on. "Yes! It would be very lonely for me, dependent as I am for society on Mariquita." Here Gore, with some inward amusement, could not refrain from accusing his possible father-in-law of some hypocrisy; for he was sure the elderly gentleman would miss his daughter as little as any father could miss his child. "Certainly," he said aloud, "it is hard to think how the range would get on without her." No doubt, her absence would be hard to fill in the matter of usefulness, and Gore was inclined to doubt whether Sarella would even wish to fill it. He was pretty sure that that young woman would refuse to work as her cousin had worked. "It _must_ get on without her," Don Joaquin agreed, not without doubt, "when her time comes for moving to a home of her own." Still Gore refused to "rise." "We must be prepared for that," Mariquita's father went on, refilling his pipe. "She is grown up. It is natural she should be thinking of her own future--"