"I've come back from twenty-three to seventeen,"
she thought, and pretended that there had never been an Angela di Sereno,
that scornful young person who had forbidden the prince to come near her
on learning that there was another whom he should have married instead of
Millionaire Merriam's daughter.
When she was a little girl in Boston (where Mrs. Merriam had insisted upon
living), Angela used to sit on her father's knee; and as he curled her
yellow hair over his fingers he wove romances of the Golden West,
reluctantly deserted for his wife's sake; and though many illusions had
broken like bright bubbles, this ideal still glittered before Angela's
eyes. She had been promised by her father that she should visit California
with him, when "Mother brought her back from Europe"; but he had died, and
mother had not brought her back; so now she was going to make the
pilgrimage alone. Not only did she intend to see the places her father had
described, but when she had seen all and could choose, she meant to buy
land and make a home for herself, her first real home.
Wherever she decided to live, the house must be like the one where her
father had been born--long and low built of adobe; there must be a patio,
with a fountain in the middle; and the rooms must be kept cool by the roof
of a veranda, shading the windows like a great overhanging eyelid.
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