g had happened-- I forgot, there is to be a
bull-bear fight in the square. So much the better, for it is in your
honor, and you could not well remain away. There is much trouble to
come, but in the end we shall win."

XVII

The muscles in Dona Ignacia's cheeks fell an inch as she listened,
dumbfounded, to the tale her husband poured out. To her simple
aristocratic soul Rezanov had loomed too great a personage to dream of
mating with a Californian; and as her sharp maternal instinct had
recognized his personal probity, even his gallantries had seemed to her
no more consequent than the more catholic trifling of his officers.

"Holy Mary!" she whimpered, when her voice came back. "Holy Mary! A
heretic! And he would take our Concha from us! And she would go! To
St. Petersburg! Ten thousand miles! To the priests with her--now--this
very day!"

Concha had thrown herself on her bed in belated hope of siesta, when
Malia (Rosa had been sent to the house of Don Mario Sal in the valley)
entered with the message that she was to accompany her parents to the
Mission at once. She rose sullenly, but in the manifold essentials of
a girl's life she had always yielded the implicit obedience exacted by
the Californian parent. In a few moments she was riding out of the
Presidio beside her father. Dona Ignacia jolted behind in her carreta,
a low and clumsy vehicle, on solid wheels and springless, drawn by
oxen, and driven by a stable-boy on a mustang. The journey was made in
complete silence save for the maledictions addressed to the oxen by the
boy, and an occasional "Ay yi!" "Madre de Dios!" "Sainted Mary, but
the sun bores a hole in the head," from Dona Ignacia, whose increasing
discomfort banished wrath and apprehension for the hour.

Don Jose did not even look at his daughter, but his face was ten years
older than in the morning. He had begun dimly to appreciate that she
was suffering, and in a manner vastly different from the passionate
resentment he had seen her display when the contents of a box from
Mexico disappointed her, or she was denied a visit to Monterey. That
his best-loved child should suffer tore his own heart, but he merely
cursed Rezanov and resolved to do his best to persuade the Governor to
yield to his other demands, that California might be rid of him the
sooner.

Father Abella was walking down the long outer corridor of the Mission
reading his breviary, and praying he might not be diverted