e of his devoted host he ran it to suit
himself. He turned one of its rooms into an office, where he received
the envoys from the different Missions and examined the samples of
everything submitted to him, trusting little to his commissary. His
leisure he employed scouring the country or shooting deer and quail in
the company of his younger hosts. The literal mind of Don Jose
accepted him as an actual son and embryonic California, and, his
conscience at peace, revelled in his society as a sign from propitiated
heaven; rejoicing in the virtue of his years. The Governor, testily
remarking that as California was so well governed for the present he
would retire to Monterey and take a siesta, rode off one morning, but
not without an affectionate: "God preserve the life of your excellency
many years."

But although Rezanov saw the most sanguine hopes that had brought him
to California fulfilled, and although he looked from the mountain
ridges of the east over the great low valleys watered by rivers and
shaded by oaks, where enough grain could be raised to keep the blood
red in a thousand times the colonial population of Russia, although he
felt himself in more and more abundant health, more and more in love
with life, it is not to be supposed for a moment that he was satisfied.
Concha he barely saw. She remained with the Moragas, and although she
came occasionally to the afternoon dances at the Presidio, and he had
dined once at her cousin's house, where the formal betrothal had taken
place and the marriage contract had been signed in the presence of her
family and more intimate friends, the priests, his officers, and the
Governor, he had not spoken with her for a moment alone. Nor had her
eyes met his in a glance of understanding. At the dances she showed
him no favor; and as the engagement was to be as secret as might be in
that small community, until his return with consent of Pope and King,
he was forced to concede that her conduct was irreproachable; but when
on the day of the betrothal she was oblivious to his efforts to draw
her into the garden, he mounted his horse and rode off in a huff.

The truth was that Concha liked the present arrangement no better than
himself, and knowing that her own appeal against the proprieties would
result in a deeper seclusion, she determined to goad him into using
every resource of address and subtlety to bring about a more human
state of affairs. And she accomplished her objec