Magdalena, I'm so sorry," she stammered. "I was only joking. And my
statesmen will probably be horrid old boors. I _know_ I'll never find
one that comes up to my ideal." She burst into tears and flung her arms
about Magdalena's neck: she was always miserable when those she loved
were angry with her, much as she delighted to shock the misprized. "Say
you forgive me," she sobbed, "or I sha'n't eat or sleep for a week." And
Magdalena, who always took her mercurial friend literally, forgave her
immediately and dried her tears.

II

Don Roberto Yorba had escaped the pecuniary extinction that had
overtaken his race. Of all the old grandees who, not forty years before,
had called the Californias their own: living a life of Arcadian
magnificence, troubled by few cares, a life of riding over vast estates
clad in silk and lace, botas and sombrero, mounted upon steeds as
gorgeously caparisoned as themselves, eating, drinking, serenading at
the gratings of beautiful women, gambling, horse-racing, taking part in
splendid religious festivals, with only the languid excitement of an
occasional war between rival governors to disturb the placid surface of
their lives,--of them all Don Roberto was a man of wealth and
consequence to-day. But through no original virtue of his. He had been
as princely in his hospitality, as reckless with his gold, as meagrely
equipped to cope with the enterprising United Statesian who first
conquered the Californian, then, nefariously, or righteously,
appropriated his acres. When Commodore Sloat ran up the American flag on
the Custom House of Monterey on July seventh, 1846, one of the
midshipmen who went on shore to seal the victory with the strength of
his lungs was a clever and restless youth named Polk. As his sharpness
and fund of dry New England anecdote had made him a distinctive position
on board ship, he was permitted to go to the ball given on the following
night by Thomas O. Larkin, United States Consul, in honour of the
Commodore and officers of the three warships then in the bay. Having
little liking for girls, he quickly fraternised with Don Roberto Yorba,
a young hidalgo who had recently lost his wife and had no heart for
festivities, although curiosity had brought him to this ball which
celebrated the downfall of his country. The two men left the
ball-room,--where the handsome and resentful senoritas were preparing to
avenge California with a battery of glance, a melody of tongue, and