weakness for women and some personal magnetism,--the latter the
offspring of the habit of mental concentration--"

"And an inexorable will--"

"Perhaps. As to the exercise of it--why not? _Vive la bagatelle!_"

"It is useless to argue with you. Are you going to let that girl
alone?"

"She is the only girl in the Californias whom I shall not let alone."

I could have shaken him. "To what end? And her brother? I have
often wondered which would rule you in a crisis, your head or your
passions."

"It would depend upon the crisis. I am afraid you are right,--that
altiloquent Reinaldo will give trouble."

"Is it true that he has been conspiring with Carillo, and that an
extraordinary and secret session of the Departmental Junta has been
called?"

He looked down upon me with his grimmest smile. "You curious little
woman! You must not put your white fingers into the Departmental pie.
If you had been a man, with as good a brain as you have for a woman,
you would have been an ornament to our politics. But as it is--pardon
me--the better for our balancing country the less you have to do with
it."