The next day they drove to the Convent of Santa Clara and the Mission
College of San Jose. Their welcome at both places seemed to Rose to be a
mingling of caste greeting and spiritual zeal, and the austere seclusion
and reserve of those cloisters repeated that suggestion of an Old World
civilization that had already fascinated the young Western girl. They
made other excursions in the vicinity, but did not extend it to a visit
to their few neighbors. With their reserved and exclusive ideas this
fact did not strike Rose as peculiar, but on a later shopping
expedition to the town of San Jose, a certain reticence and aggressive
sensitiveness on the part of the shopkeepers and tradespeople towards
the Randolphs produced an unpleasant impression on her mind. She could
not help noticing, too, that after the first stare of astonishment which
greeted her appearance with her hostess, she herself was included in
the antagonism. With her youthful prepossession for her friends, this
distinction she regarded as flattering and aristocratic, and I fear she
accented it still more by discussing with Mrs. Randolph the merits
of the shopkeepers' wares in schoolgirl French before them. She was
unfortunate enough, however, to do this in the shop of a polyglot
German.

"Oxcoos me, mees," he said gravely,--"but dot lady speeks Engeleesh so
goot mit yourselluf, and ven you dells to her dot silk is hallf gotton
in English, she onderstand you mooch better, and it don't make nodings
to me." The laugh which would have followed from her own countrywomen
did not, however, break upon the trained faces of the "de Fontanges
l'Hommadieus," yet while Rose would have joined in it, albeit a
little ruefully, she felt for the first time mortified at their civil
insincerity.

At the end of two weeks, Major Randolph received a letter from Mr.