For Thatcher was no sentimentalist; he had hardly paid a
compliment to the girl,--even in the unspoken but most delicate form
of attention. There were days when his room door was closed; there were
days succeeding these blanks when he met her as frankly and naturally as
if he had seen her yesterday. Indeed, on those days following his flight
the simple-minded Carmen, being aware--heaven knows how--that he had not
opened his door during that period, and fearing sickness, sudden death,
or perhaps suicide, by her appeals to the landlady, assisted unwittingly
in discovering his flight and defection. As she was for a few moments
as indignant as Mrs. Plodgitt, it is evident that she had but little
sympathy with the delinquent. And besides, hitherto she had known only
Concho, her earliest friend, and was true to his memory, as against all
Americanos, whom she firmly believed to be his murderers.
So she dismissed the offer and the man from her mind, and went back
to her painting,--a fancy portrait of the good Padre Junipero Serra,
a great missionary, who, haply for the integrity of his bones and
character, died some hundred years before the Americans took possession
of California.
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