your bridges until you come to them. That
is a good proverb for maids and men. You might take us all with you,
or spend every third year or so in California. No doubt you would need
the rest. And meanwhile remember that the high and mighty Chamberlain
has not yet asked for the honor of an alliance with the house of
Arguello, and that your brother will match his best fighting cock
against your new white lace mantilla from Mexico, that he is not
meditating any project so detrimental to his fortunes. Console
yourself with the reflection that if he were, our father and the
priests, and the Governor himself, would die of apoplexy. He is a
heretic--a member of the Greek Church! Hast thou lost thy reason,
Conchita? Dry your eyes and come home to sleep, and let us hear no
more of marriage with a man who is not only a barbarian of the north
and a heretic, but so proud he does not think a Californian good enough
to wash his decks."

IV

It was long before Rezanov slept that night. The usual chill had come
in from the Pacific as the sun went down, and the distinguished visitor
had intimated to his hosts that he should like to exercise on shore
until ready for his detested quarters; but Arguello dared not, in the
absence of his father, invite the foreigner even to sleep in the house
so lavishly offered in the morning; although he had sent such an
abundance of provisions to the ship that the poor sailors were deep in
sleep, gorged like boa-constrictors; and he could safely promise that
while the Juno remained in port her larder should never be empty. He
shared the evening bowl of punch in the cabin, then went his way
lamenting that he could not take his new friends with him.

Rezanov paced the little deck of the Juno to keep his blood in stir.
There was no moon. The islands and promontories on the great sheet of
water were black save for the occasional glow of an Indian camp-fire.
There was not a sound but the lapping of the waves, the roar of distant
breakers. The great silver stars and the little green stars looked
down upon a solitude that was almost primeval, yet mysteriously
disturbed by the restless currents in the brain of a man who had little
in common with primal forces.

Rezanov was uneasy on more scores than one. He was annoyed and
mortified at the discovery--made over the punch bowl--that the girl he
had taken to be twenty was but sixteen. It was by no means his first
experience of the quick maturit