The young man nodded an assent, touched up his steeds, and the wagon disappeared down the red dusty road. The two young girls entered the house, Barbara leading the stranger to a large room on the upper story. In a low chair sat a small woman, with a face which must have once been beautiful, and which now shone with an expression of simple sincerity and kindliness. She held out her hand to Millicent, kissed her on both cheeks, and warmly bade her welcome to San Rosario. Millicent Almsford acknowledged the greeting with a courteous grace, and immediately after accepted Barbara’s offer to show her to her room. When the door was shut upon her, and she was for the first time in many days alone, she seated herself at the window, and leaning her head upon her hand, remained wrapped in thought. She had travelled from the coast of the Adriatic Sea to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, with no companion save her maid and her own painful thoughts. And now the long journeying was at an end, and she found herself in the far West, in California, amidst her kindred, all strangers to her save by tradition and some slight correspondence. She looked about the strange room. It was exquisitely neat and fresh, with its clean whitewashed walls and new blue Kidderminster carpet, its black-walnut "bedroom set," and comfortable lounge, which had been newly covered in her honor. On the bureau were blue and white mats and cushions, a toilet-set which Barbara’s busy fingers had stolen time to make. She marked all these little details, not one of which escaped her eyes, even to the embroidered towel-rack with her initials, and the worked motto, "Welcome home." Again she looked out from the window over a wide pleasant orchard, filled with heavily fruited peach and plum trees; over a garden gay with bright-hued flowers, and beyond to the everlasting hills which close about the happy valley wherein stands the house of the San Rosario Ranch. Numbers of oxen and cows were straying over the hills, with here and there groups of sheep cropping the sun-dried grass of the hills.