o say to her equally silent companion.

IX

Dona Eustaquia seldom gave balls, but once a week she opened her salas
to the more intellectual people of the town. A few Americans were ever
attendant; General Vallejo often came from Sonoma to hear the latest
American and Mexican news in her house; Castro rarely had been absent;
Alvarado, in the days of his supremacy, could always be found there, and
she was the first woman upon whom Pio Pico called when he deigned to
visit Monterey. A few young people came to sit in a corner with Benicia,
but they had little to say.

The night after the picnic some fifteen or twenty people were gathered
about Dona Eustaquia in the large sala on the right of the hall; a few
others were glancing over the Mexican papers in the little sala on the
left. The room was ablaze with many candles standing, above the heads
of the guests, in twisted silver candelabra, the white walls reflecting
their light. The floor was bare, the furniture of stiff mahogany and
horse-hair, but no visitor to that quaint ugly room ever thought of
looking beyond the brilliant face of Dona Eustaquia, the lovely eyes of
her daughter, the intelligence and animation of the people she gathered
about her. As a rule Dona Modeste Castro's proud head and strange beauty
had been one of the living pictures of that historical sala, but she was
not there to-night.

As Captain Brotherton and Lieutenant Russell entered, Dona Eustaquia was
waging war against Mr. Larkin.

"And what hast thou to say to that proclamation of thy little American
hero, thy Commodore"--she gave the word a satirical roll, impossible to
transcribe--"who is heir to a conquest without blood, who struts into
history as the Commander of the United States Squadron of the Pacific,
holding a few hundred helpless Californians in subjection? O warlike
name of Sloat! O heroic name of Stockton! O immortal Fremont, prince
of strategists and tacticians, your country must be proud of you! Your
newspapers will glorify you! Sometime, perhaps, you will have a little
history bound in red morocco all to yourselves; whilst Castro--" she
sprang to her feet and brought her open palm down violently upon the
table, "Castro, the real hero of this country, the great man ready to
die a thousand deaths for the liberty of the Californians, a man who was
made for great deeds and born for fame, he will be left to rust and rot
because we have no newspapers to glorify him, and the Gringos