that night, something he had not dared to hope for, and he suspected
that she had promoted the opportunity.

The men remained in the dining-room after the ladies had withdrawn,
and Estenega, restored to his normal condition, and in his natural
element among these people of the world, expanded into the high
spirits and convivial interest in masculine society which made him as
popular with men as he was fascinating, through the exercise of
more subtle faculties, to women. Reinaldo watched him with jealous
impatience; no one cared to hearken to his eloquence when Estenega
talked; and he had come to Fort Ross only to have a conversation
with his one-time enemy. As he listened to Estenega, shorn, for the
time-being, of his air of dictator and watchful ambition, a man of
the world taking an enthusiastic part in the hilarity of the hour,
but never sacrificing his dignity by assuming the rôle of chief
entertainer, there grew within him a dull sense of inferiority: he
felt, rather than knew, that neither the city of Mexico nor gratified
ambitions would give him that assured ease, that perfection of
breeding, that calm sense of power, concealing so gracefully the
relentless will and the infinite resource which made this most
un-Californian of Californians seem to his Arcadian eyes a being of a
higher star. And hatred blazed forth anew.

As the men rose, finally, to go to the drawing-room, he asked Estenega
to remain for a moment. "Thou wilt keep thy promise soon, no?" he said
when they were alone.

"What promise?"

"Thy promise to send me as diputado to the next Mexican Congress."