And Sarella did not speedily give over missing Mariquita. She was a girl who on principle preferred men's society to that of other women, but in practice had considerable need of female companionship. She liked to make men admire her, but she did not much care to be admired by the cowboys, and took it for granted that they already admired her as much as befitted their inferior position. She had always been too shrewd to try and make other women admire her, but she liked talking to them about clothes, which no man understands; and, though Mariquita had been careless about her own sumptuous affairs, she had been a wonderfully appreciative (or long-suffering) listener when Sarella talked about hers. "And after all," Sarella confessed, "she had taste. My style would not have suited her. That plain style of her own was best for her." When Don Joaquin returned from Denver he seemed unlike himself, almost subdued. He had been much impressed by the great convent and its large community; the nuns had made much of him, and of Mariquita. They spoke in a way that at last put it into his head that he had under-valued her; there is nothing for awaking our appreciation of our own near relations like the sudden perception that other people think greatly of them. Gore's respect and admiration for his daughter had not done much, for he had only looked upon it as the blind predilection of a young man in love with a beautiful girl. Several of the nuns, including their Reverend Mother, had spoken to him apart, in Mariquita's absence, not immediately on his and her arrival, but on the evening of the following day; on the morrow he was to depart on his return to the range, and in these conversations the Sisters let him plainly see that they regarded the girl as peculiarly graced by God, and of rarely high and noble character. He asked the Superior if she thought Mariquita would wish to stay with them and become one of themselves. "No," was the answer. "She is a born Contemplative. Every nun must be a contemplative in some degree, but I use the word in its common sense. I mean that I believe she will find herself called to an Order of pure Contemplatives. She will make a Retreat here, and very likely will be shown during it what is God's will for her." It surprised the kind and warm-hearted Religious that he did not inquire whether that life were not very hard. But she took charitable refuge in the supposition that he knew so little about one Order or another as to be free from the dread that his child might have a life of great austerity before her.