It was what he spoke out aloud to Clara, when, after months of intimate acquaintance, he understood that Clara's mother wanted to see her daughter "settled." But he didn't die; he only bewailed his fate, his inability to make her his cherished wife, and lay all the treasures of the Golden State at her feet. To quote Christine's hard, unsympathetic opinion, he was "a graceless monkey, a fortune hunter, without ambition enough to try for a living for himself, let alone for the woman he professed to adore." Amid tears and protestations of breaking hearts and darkened lives they parted: Clara to give her hand, at her mother's entreaties, to a man of great wealth and corresponding age and respectability--her lover to continue his search for a wife who could boast of money besides beauty and amiability. Miss Barbara's heart was good in the main, and she would not have hurt Clara as she did had she not been wild with an excitement for which there seemed no cause. She was heedless, to be sure; and her temper--well, she had red hair. Only three days later, early in the morning, we see them all at the depot, and comfortably seated in the cars--Mrs. Wardor, Clara, Barbara, and Daisy--with Kickup aboard the train, but in a different car--Kickup being only an Indian pony, and the shaggiest kind of one at that. Miss Barbara and "her maid," as she grandly styled the moon-faced Indian sometimes, sat behind Mrs. Wardor and Clara--Clara and Barbara each sitting nearest the window. Clara in deepest black, with the delicate flush on her face, looked, the most interesting of young widows, and whenever she raised her dove-like eyes, was sure to encounter the gaze of the many who stood outside. Just as the sharp click of the starting-bell rang through the cars, Clara, looking up, caught sight of a figure that caused her heart to beat full and fast. Yet her face grew pale as she noted the form of which the words "an elegantly attired gentleman" would, perhaps, give the best idea. He leaned against one of the wooden pillars supporting the depot roof, with a dejected, melancholy air. Almost involuntarily Clara leaned forward, but sank back the next moment, her face ablaze, her lips trembling. The impish laugh of the Indian girl that had struck her so unpleasantly on the night of her return from San Jose, again fell on her ear, and Miss Barbara's irrepressible "te-he" mingled with it. Had she then betrayed her heart's secret to these two foolish, giggling things? Her cheeks burned with mortification, but in her heart there was a strange gleam of happiness. He knew, then, that she was free; he had heard of her leaving the city, and chose this delicate way of intimating to her that.--Ah! well; she was still in deepest mourning, and must not think--anything--for a while yet, at least.