then sometimes he looks kind and sometimes he looks like a devil. He
has not the beauty of color; his hair is brown, I think, and his eyes
are gray, and set far back; but how they flash! I think they could
burn if they looked too long. He is tall and straight and very strong,
not so indolent as most of our men. They call him The American because
he moves so quickly and gets so cross when people do not think fast
enough. _He_ thinks like lightning strikes. Ay! they all say that he
will be governor in his time; that he would have been long ago, but he
has been away so much. It must be that he has seen and admired thee,
my Chonita, and discovered thy grating. Thou art happy that thou too
hast read the books. Thou and he will be great friends, I know!"

"Yes!" exclaimed Chonita, scornfully. "It is likely. Thou hast
forgotten--perhaps--the enmity between the Capulets and the Montagues
was a sallow flame to the bitter hatred, born of jealousy in love,
politics, and social precedence, which exists between the Estenegas
and the Iturbi y Moncadas?"




II.


Delfina, the first child of Alvarado, born in the purple at the
governor's mansion in Monterey, was about to be baptized with all the
pomp and ceremony of the Church and time. Doña Martina, the wife of
a year, was unable to go to the church, but lay beneath her lace and
satin coverlet, her heavy black hair half covering the other side of
the bed. Beside her stood the nurse, a fat, brown, high-beaked old