He nodded at the names--Bessie knew well how to arrange her parties. The Thurstons were two impoverished sisters of great beauty and that proud Southern stock of which early California thought so highly and rewarded in most cases with poverty. Count de Lamolle was a distinguished foreigner that she was considering for Maud. The other two young men filled in nicely. The Delanceys were a brother and sister, claimants of the great Delancey Grant, which was now in litigation. It had come into their possession by the marriage of their grandmother, the Senorita Concepcion de Briones, in ’36, to the Yankee skipper, Jeremiah Delancey. “Who was the girl Mrs. Willers wanted you to see?” Bessie asked. “Oh, I’ll tell you about her to-morrow. It’s a long story, and I don’t want to be hurried over it.” He had made up his mind that he would tell Bessie he had seen and intended to assist his eldest child. He had always been frank with her and he was not going to dissemble now. He knew that with all her faults she was a generous woman. CHAPTER IV A GALA NIGHT “He looked at her as a lover can; She looked at him as one who awakes.” --BROWNING. From his first meeting with her, Barry Essex had conceived a deep interest in Mariposa. He had known women of many and divers sorts, and loved a few after the manner of his kind, which was to foster indolently a selfish caprice. Marriage was out of the question for him unless with money, and some instinct, perhaps inherited from his romantic and deeply-loving mother, made this singularly repugnant to his nature, which was neither sensitive nor scrupulous. The mystery and hazard of life appealed passionately to him, and to exchange this for the dull monotony of a rich marriage was an unbearably irksome thought to his unrestrained and adventurous spirit. Mariposa’s charm had struck him deep. He had never before met that combination of extreme simplicity of character with the unconscious majesty of appearance which marked the child of the far West. He saw her in that Europe, which was his home, as a conquering queen; and he thought proudly of himself as the owner of such a woman. Moreover he was certain that her voice, properly trained and directed, would be a source of wealth. She seemed to him the real vocal artist, stupid in all but one great gift; in that, preëminent. Mariposa was trembling on the verge of a first love. She had never seen any one like Essex and regarded him as the most distinguished and brilliant of beings. His attentions flattered her as she had never been flattered before, and she found herself constantly wondering what he saw in a girl who must appear to him so raw.