It was but slowly that Manuelita obeyed her father's order to return home; her little feet lagged as the girl dwelt on the scene she had just witnessed, and wondered what it meant. Somehow this American always set her wondering about something. His very unlikeness to the men whom she had hitherto lived among made him appear almost as strange to her as a visitor from another world. He had begun by half repelling, and had ended by fascinating her; on this point the guess of the coarse-minded but quick-witted Texan was not mistaken. Although in speech and manners, in all his tastes and habits, Stephens offered a complete contrast to her Mexican fellow-countrymen, he himself with his light hair and fair complexion was not a type absolutely new to this girl, for in the place of honour in her grandfather's dining-room had hung a portrait of a golden-haired _caballero_, the great Manuel Sanchez, the friend of Cortez; and Manuelita had woven so many romantic dreams about her glorious ancestor that this fair-haired American had come to seem to her a sort of copy of her hero of romance. It was only in dreams and traditions that the girl had met with heroes; the secluded life led by Mexican ladies was in her case more solitary than usual, for the Sanchez family was poor (poor for its position, that is) but proud, and Manuelita turned up her pretty nose at the few young rancheros of the neighbourhood, and held them beneath the notice of the daughter of a _conquistador_. The girl's passionate southern nature, with all its capacity for devotion, had slept longer than was usual among her people, and when her heart should awake it would be the heart of a woman, not of a schoolgirl. The young rancheros flaunted their silver spurs and velvet jackets at the Fiestas in vain; they swore the señorita was as wild as an antelope; and, like an antelope, she was caught by her curiosity. She could not keep from speculating on the strange character of this American who bore the golden locks of her great ancestor. The character of a handsome young man is a dangerous study for the peace of mind of a girl, and her interest in the stranger grew so rapidly that soon it seemed to her that there was little else worth studying "beneath the visiting moon."