CHAPTER XXX.
THE QUENCHING OF QUIPAI.
The cottage at Alta Vista had expanded little by little into a long, single storied flat-roofed house, shaded by palm-trees and set in a fair garden, which looked all the brighter from its contrast with the brown and herbless hill-sides that uprose around it.
In the after part of the day on which I discovered the theft, Angela and myself were sitting under the veranda, which fronted the house and commanded a view of the great reservoir, the oasis and the ocean.

She was reading aloud a favorite chapter in "Don Quixote," one of the few books we possessed.

I was smoking.
Angela read well; her pronunciation of Spanish was faultless, and I always took particular pleasure in hearing her read the idiomatic Castilian of Cervantes.

Nevertheless, my mind wandered; and, try as I might, I could not help thinking more of the theft of the diamonds than the doughty deeds of the Don and the shrewd sayings of Sancho Panza.

Not that the loss gave me serious concern.