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.

The landscape was a perfect symphony in brown. The round shiny hills were golden in color; the warm-hued earth in the ploughed fields and the meadows, whose crop of grass had long since been mowed, was of a deeper tint. The house stood in an oasis of green. A great hedge of rose-trees blushing with red blossoms marked the boundary of the flower-garden, irrigated with great care through the long summer months. The sun, low-hanging over the hilltops, suddenly dropped from sight; and as the room grew dim, Millicent shivered slightly, and turning from the window threw herself on the couch and lay there quite still, too tired even to weep out the pain and homesickness in her heart. A tap on the door was followed by the entrance of one of her trunks, brought in by two strong Chinamen, at whose coppery faces Millicent stared curiously. Six large boxes were placed in a row and unstrapped by the younger Chinaman, who, when he had completed his task, approached the stranger land said in a sympathetic voice, "Me solly you sick; Ah Lam bring tea-cup?" The white Celestial smiled benignantly and vanished, quickly reappearing with the promised cup of tea, which proved most grateful to the girl's tired nerves. The creature's sympathy and attention brought tears to her eyes; and when Barbara came in a few minutes later, to help her in unpacking, she found the traces of these tears on Millicent's cheeks.

"Do not try to dress for tea, dear; you are too tired. Where shall I find your dressing-case? You must let me take the place of your maid, now that she has left you so cruelly."

So talking pleasantly, Barbara unpacked the guest's dressing-bag, looked admiringly at the silver-topped bottles with "M. A." engraven upon them, the ivory brushes, and all the dainty et ceteras which were necessities to the foreign girl, with the long white hands and finger-nails which shone like pale pink conch-pearls.

"Thank you, if you would help me a little to-night, I shall quickly learn to do for myself. If you will look in that largest trunk, you may give me whatever gown lies at the top."

Barbara unfolded as she was bid a sea-green cashmere dress, in which the stranger quickly clad her slender figure. Manifold strings of tiny seed-pearls she wound about her white throat and wrists, performing all the details of her dressing with a careful precision which seemed part of her nature. The pink nails received an extra polish, though the tea-bell had twice summoned the inmates of the house to the evening repast. With a peculiarly graceful motion, like the undulation of a swift but quiet stream, she moved about the room and finally down the stairway to the dining-room below.

"Millicent, will you sit here, on my right? Hal shall have the pleasure of occupying the place beside you."

The speaker was the lady whose gentle, firm hand swayed the small realm of the San Rosario Ranch during the long absence of its master, Mr. Ralph Almsford.

Mr. Almsford had been a widower for the past ten years. On the death of his beloved wife, her mother Mrs. Deering had continued at his earnest request to make his house her home. Her two younger children, Barbara and Henry Deering, remembered no other home, and it seemed but natural to them that they should continue to live with their brother-in-law. The family life was a particularly happy one, and the tie between Ralph Almsford and the Deerings was closer than that which exists between many blood relations.

The advent of the young heiress Millicent Almsford, the half-sister of Ralph, was an event of great importance in the household, and had been eagerly anticipated by Mrs. Deering and her daughter for several weeks. Henry Deering--or as he was always called Hal--displayed an absolute indifference concerning the "strange girl" who was coming to make her home among them for a year. What Ralph Almsford felt about his guest no one of the household could divine. He was a quiet, reticent man, entirely absorbed in his business, which of late had often taken him from home for months at a time. He had written to his half-sister, urging her to visit the ranch; and his letter, the first one of the kind she had ever received, had so moved the girl that she had telegraphed her departure, and forthwith started on her long journey.

Her brother met her in San Francisco, where they passed one day together,--a business engagement calling him away on the morrow, as he hoped for a few days only.

Millicent took the place assigned her by Mrs. Deering, and supper was enlivened by conversation about the journey she had just achieved, which she described as the most terrible ordeal that it was possible for a human being to undergo. The guest was entirely at her ease, though her position might have been to many people an embarrassing one. Arriving alone in a household of near connections, who were as yet absolute strangers to her, and with whom it had been decided that the next year of her life should be passed, most girls in her place would have experienced some sensation of awkwardness; but Millicent was entirely mistress of the situation. She spoke principally to Hal Deering, a jolly-looking fellow of twenty-five, who puzzled her with the bits of dialect, perfectly unintelligible to her, which he introduced into his conversation.

After supper Mrs. Deering led the way into the drawing-room, saying to her guest,--

"Will you join us at prayers in the library, Millicent? Or would you prefer waiting here for us?"

"I see that you already know that I am an unorthodox person, Mrs. Deering. Frankly, I would prefer not coming, if you will allow me. Being an agnostic, I should hardly be in sympathy with your service. If you will kindly excuse me, I will await you here."

Millicent's refusal to join the family at their devotions was accompanied with a smile so exquisite and winning that the offence was forgiven, although forgiveness had not been asked. Hal, the great six-foot giant, more than forgave the graceful girl her ungraciousness, and would have a thousand times preferred remaining with her to joining his mother and sister.

On being left to herself, Millicent moved to the piano which stood open near the window, and seating herself let her white fingers stray gently over the keys. Strange hands were Millicent's, of a whiteness that made her pale cheek look brown by comparison. The fingers were long and taper, at the tip of each a drop as of water ready to fall from the pink digits. The wrists were round and very slender. On the fifth finger of the left hand she wore a strange, small old ring of an Etruscan pattern, which had been stripped from the fleshless hand of a princess, whose sanctuary had been rifled by some nineteenth-century robber of graves. The setting enclosed a small green intaglio exquisitely carved, representing a Psyche with new-found wings.

She had a strange, white luminous face whose beauty shone from within and lit the dark gray eyes with a rare and tender loveliness. The large mouth was more exquisitely refined than the mere rosebud tininess of Barbara Deering's. The teeth were very white and perfect, and the veil of