Chapter 13 - Page 2

himself agreeable, and I am the daughter of the Com- mandante."

"He is more in love with you than he knows."

"Do you think so, Weeliam?" Still her voice was innocent and even, although the color rose above the inner commotion. "But even so, what of it? Have not many loved me? Am I to be won by the first stranger?"

"I do not know."

The tumult in Concha turned to wrath, and she lifted flashing eyes to his moody face. "Do you presume to say you are jealous because you think I love him--a stranger I have known but a week--who looks upon me as a child--who has never--never thought--" But her dignity, flying to the rescue, assumed control. Her upper lip curled, her body stiffened for a moment, and she went on with her stitching. "You deserve I should rap your silly little skull with my thimble. You are no better than Ignacio and Fernando. Such scenes as I have had with them! They wanted to fight the Russian! How he would laugh at them! I have threatened they shall both be sent to San Diego if there is any more nonsense." Then curiosity overcame her. "You never had the least, least reason to think I would marry you, and now, according to your own words, you think you have less. Then why, pray, did you address me?"

"Because I am a man, I suppose. I could not sit tamely down and see you go."

She looked at him with a slight access of interest. A man? Perhaps he was, after all. And his well- bred, bony face looked very determined, albeit the eyes were wistful. Suddenly she felt sorry for him; and she had never experienced a pang of sympathy for a suitor before. She leaned forward and patted his hand.

"I cannot marry you, dear Weeliam," she said, and never had he seen her so sweet and adorable, although he noted with a pang that her mouth was already drawn with a firmer line. "But what matter? I shall never marry at all. For many years--forty, fifty perhaps--I shall sit here on the veranda, and you shall read to me."

And then she shivered violently. But she set her mouth until it was almost straight, and picked up the little dress. "Not that, perhaps," she said quietly in a moment. "I sometimes think I should like to be a nun, that, after all, it is my vocation. Not a cloistered one, for that is but a selfish life. But to teach, to do good, to forget myself. There are no convents in California, but I could join the Third Order of the Franciscans, and wear the gray habit, and be set aside by the world as one that only lived to make it a little better. To forget oneself! That, after all, may be the secret of happiness. I envy none of my friends that are married. They have the dear children, it is true. But the children grow up and go away, and then one is fat and eats many dulces and the siesta grows longer and longer and the face very brown. That is