s. "Oh, these Americans! How I hate them!"
she cried, a reflection of her mother's violent spirit on her sweet
face.

Dona Eustaquia caught the girl's hands and flung herself upon her neck.
"Ay! California! California!" she cried wildly. "My country is flung to
its knees in the dirt."

A rose from the upper corridor of the Custom-house struck her daughter
full in the face.

II

The same afternoon Benicia ran into the sala where her mother was lying
on a sofa, and exclaimed excitedly: "My mother! My mother! It is not
so bad. The Americans are not so wicked as we have thought. The
proclamation of the Commodore Sloat has been pasted on all the walls of
the town and promises that our grants shall be secured to us under the
new government, that we shall elect our own alcaldes, that we shall
continue to worship God in our own religion, that our priests shall
be protected, that we shall have all the rights and advantages of the
American citizen--"

"Stop!" cried Dona Eustaquia, springing to her feet. Her face still
burned with the bitter experience of the morning. "Tell me of no more
lying promises! They will keep their word! Ay, I do not doubt but they
will take advantage of our ignorance, with their Yankee sharpness! I
know them! Do not speak of them to me again. If it must be, it must; and
at least I have thee." She caught the girl in her arms, and covered the
flower-like face with passionate kisses. "My little one! My darling!
Thou lovest thy mother--better than all the world? Tell me!"

The girl pressed her soft, red lips to the dark face which could express
such fierceness of love and hate.

"My mother! Of course I love thee. It is because I have thee that I do
not take the fate of my country deeper heart. So long as they do not put
their ugly bayonets between us, what difference whether the eagle or the
stars wave above the fort?"

"Ah, my child, thou hast not that love of country which is part of my
soul! But perhaps it is as well, for thou lovest thy mother the more. Is
it not so, my little one?"

"Surely, my mother; I love no one in the world but you."

Dona Eustaquia leaned back and tapped the girl's fair cheek with her
finger.

"Not even Don Fernando Altimira?"

"No, my mother."

"Nor Flujencio Hernandez? Nor Juan Perez? Nor any of the caballeros who
serenade beneath thy window?"

"I love their music, but it comes as sweetly from one throat as from
another."

Her mother gave a long sigh of r