hour to hour we ripe and ripe and then from hour to hour we rot
and rot,' still for a quarter-century or so the nettle of ambition
flagellating our brain may serve to make life less uninteresting and
more satisfactory. The abstraction and absorption of the fight, the
stinging fear of rivals, the murmur of acknowledgment, the shout of
compelled applause,--they fill the blanks."

"Tell me," she said, imperiously, "what do you want?"

"Shall I tell you? I never have spoken of it to a living soul but
Alvarado. Shall I tell it to a woman,--and an Iturbi y Moncada? Could
the folly of man further go?"

"If I am a woman I am an Iturbi y Moncada, and if I am an Iturbi y
Moncada I have the honor of its generations in my veins."

"Very good. I believe you would not betray me, even in the interest of
your house. Would you?"

"No."

"And I love to talk to you, to tell you what I would tell no other.
Listen, then. An envoy goes to Mexico next week with letters from
Alvarado, desiring that I be the next governor of the Californias, and
containing the assurance that the Departmental Junta will endorse
me. I shall follow next month to see Santa Ana personally; I know him
well, and he was a friend of my father's. I wish to be invested with
peculiar powers; that is to say, I wish California to be practically
overlooked while I am governor and I wish it understood that I shall
be governor as long as I please. Alvarado will hold no office under