“Not so well as I know him,” said Mrs. H. quite seriously. “I wish I did.” “Well, you'll find out if she's to be trusted! You are laughing,--it is a serious matter! This woman--” Mrs. Hopkinson dropped him a charming courtesy and said, “C'est moi!” CHAPTER XII A RACE FOR IT Royal Thatcher worked hard. That the boyish little painter who shared his hospitality at the “Blue Mass” mine should afterward have little part in his active life seemed not inconsistent with his habits. At present the mine was his only mistress, claiming his entire time, exasperating him with fickleness, but still requiring that supreme devotion of which his nature was capable. It is possible that Miss Carmen saw this too, and so set about with feminine tact, if not to supplement, at least to make her rival less pertinacious and absorbing. Apart from this object, she zealously labored in her profession, yet with small pecuniary result, I fear. Local art was at a discount in California. The scenery of the country had not yet become famous; rather it was reserved for a certain Eastern artist, already famous, to make it so; and people cared little for the reproduction, under their very noses, of that which they saw continually with their own eyes, and valued not. So that little Mistress Carmen was fain to divert her artist soul to support her plump little material body; and made divers excursions into the regions of ceramic art, painting on velvet, illuminating missals, decorating china, and the like. I have in my possession some wax flowers--a startling fuchsia and a bewildering dahlia--sold for a mere pittance by this little lady, whose pictures lately took the prize at a foreign exhibition, shortly after she had been half starved by a California public, and claimed by a California press as its fostered child of genius. Of these struggles and triumphs Thatcher had no knowledge; yet he was perhaps more startled than he would own to himself when, one December day, he received this despatch: “Come to Washington at once.--Carmen de Haro.”