y day. And my new gown, mamacita! The beautiful silver
spangles! There is not such a gown in Monterey! Ay, I must go. And they
say the Americans hop like puppies when they dance. How I shall laugh
at them! And it is not once in the year that I have a chance to speak
English, and none of the other girls can. And all the girls, all the
girls, all the girls, will go to this ball. Oh, mamacita!"

Her mother was obliged to laugh. "Well, well, I cannot refuse you
anything; you know that! Go to the ball! Ay, yi, do not smother me! As
you have said--that little head can think--we must meet these insolent
braggarts sooner or later. So I would not--" her cheeks blanched
suddenly, she caught her daughter's face between her hands, and bent her
piercing eyes above the girl's soft depths. "Mother of God! That could
not be. My child! Thou couldst never love an American! A Gringo! A
Protestant! Holy Mary!"

Benicia threw back her head and gave a long laugh--the light rippling
laugh of a girl who has scarcely dreamed of lovers. "I love an American?
Oh, my mother! A great, big, yellow-haired bear! When I want only to
laugh at their dancing! No, mamacita, when I love an American thou shalt
have his ears for thy necklace."

III

Thomas O. Larkin, United States Consul to California until the
occupation left him without duties, had invited Monterey to meet the
officers of the _Savannah, Cyane,_ and _Levant_, and only Dona Modeste
Castro had declined. At ten o'clock the sala of his large house on the
rise of the hill was thronged with robed girls in every shade and device
of white, sitting demurely behind the wide shoulders of coffee-coloured
dowagers, also in white, and blazing with jewels. The young matrons were
there, too, although they left the sala at intervals to visit the room
set apart for the nurses and children; no Monterena ever left her little
ones at home. The old men and the caballeros wore the black coats and
white trousers which Monterey fashion dictated for evening wear; the
hair of the younger men was braided with gay ribbons, and diamonds
flashed in the lace of their ruffles.

The sala was on the second floor; the musicians sat on the corridor
beyond the open windows and scraped their fiddles and twanged their
guitars, awaiting the coming of the American officers. Before long the
regular tramp of many feet turning from Alvarado Street up the little
Primera del Este, facing Mr. Larkin's house, made dark eyes flash, la