Black Dan, who had gone to New York to meet her, brought her back in triumph. His idolatrous love had known no abatement in the two years’ separation. To have her finally restored to him, in an even completer state of perfection, was a bewildering happiness to him. His primitive nature strove to show its gratitude and tenderness in extravagant ways. He showered presents on her, ordered the finest suite in the newly-completed Lick House to be prepared for her, offered to rent any country place she might choose. That she should accompany him to the rough life of Virginia, where he spent most of his time, he never expected. It would be enough for him to see her on his frequent visits to the coast. The other notable visitor who arrived in the city almost simultaneously was a young Englishman, Lionel Harrower. He, too, took up his residence in the Lick House, and it was but natural that some of the interest evoked by the appearance of Black Dan’s daughter should be deflected toward him. Young Harrower was a nephew of that Englishman who fifteen years before had married Mrs. Newbury’s sister, Carmen Romero. He was finishing his education by a trip around the world, and had decided to make a stop of some length in California, then a _terra incognita_ to the traveling Briton. From his Spanish-Californian aunt he had brought letters to the Newburys, Mrs. Davenport, and other prominent San Franciscans. The Englishman of Harrower’s class was at that time a rarity in the far West. Bonanza heiresses had not yet arisen to be the bait for well-born foreigners of all nations. California, outside its own borders, still enjoyed its original reputation as a land of picturesque gold-diggers and romantic gamblers, and the wandering noble of Anglo-Saxon or Gallic extraction avoided it as an unsafe place, where men were still free with the revolver and the bowie knife. Harrower was an even more engrossing object of local curiosity than Mercedes. He was a good-looking young man of five and twenty, quiet in manner, non-committal and brief of speech, deeply interested in all he saw, and very shy. He was the heir to a baronetcy and fine country place in Warwickshire. His grandfather, the present baronet, was in his eighty-first year, and, though a hale old man, could not be expected to live much longer. When he died Lionel Harrower would inherit the title and lands, thereby coming into possession of one of the oldest and most beautiful estates in the county. The young man neither looked nor hinted any of these matters. But they were all carefully set down in the letters that Carmen Romero wrote to her sister and her friends, and they passed from mouth to mouth, accumulating material as they progressed. San Francisco had not had enough experience in the visiting patrician to be familiar with all the delicate gradations of rank, and Harrower was regarded as of hardly less distinction than a reigning Grand Duke.