back. And as it was
almost the half of a century from that night before the American flag
flew over the Custom House of Monterey, there is reason to believe that
Russian aggression under the leadership of so energetic and resourceful
a spirit as Nicolai Petrovich de Rezanov was in a fair way to make
history first in the New Albion of Drake and the California of the
incompetent Spaniard.

V

The Russians were to call at the house of the Commandante on their way
to the Mission, and Concha herself made the chocolate with which they
were to be detained for another hour. It was another sparkling
morning, one of the few that came between winter and summer, summer and
winter, and made even this bleak peninsula a land of enchantment before
the cold winds took the sand hills up by their foundations and drove
them down to Yerba Buena, submerging the battery and every green thing
by the way; or the great fogs rolled down from the tule lands of the
north and in from the sea, making the shivering San Franciscan forget
that not ten miles away the sun was as prodigal as youth. For a few
weeks San Francisco had her springtime, when the days were warm and the
air of a wonderful lightness and brightness, the atmosphere so clear
that the flowers might be seen on the islands, when man walked with
wings on his feet and a song in his heart; when the past was done with,
the future mattered not, the present with its ever changing hues on bay
and hill, its cool electrical breezes stirring imagination and pulse,
was all in all.

And it was in San Francisco's springtime that Concha Arguello made
chocolate for the Russian to whom she was to give a niche in the
history of her land; and sang at her task. She whirled the molinillo
in each cup as it was filled, whipping the fragrant liquid to froth;
pausing only to scold when her servant stained one of the dainty
saucers or cups. Poor Rosa did not sing, although the spring attuned
her broken spirit to a gentler melancholy than when the winds howled
and the fog was cold in her marrow. She had been sentenced by the last
Governor, the wise Borica, to eight years of domestic servitude in the
house of Don Jose Arguello for abetting her lover in the murder of his
wife. Concha, thoughtless in many things, did what she could to
exorcise the terror and despair that stared from the eyes of the Indian
and puzzled her deeply. Rosa adored her young mistress and exulted
even when Concha's voice ros