t take
it--I'll walk downstairs on my head."

Helena, even at indeterminate sixteen, showed promise of great beauty,
and her eyes sparkled with the insolence of the spoiled child who
already knew the power of wealth. The girl she addressed had only a pair
of dark intelligent eyes to reclaim an uncomely face. Her skin was
swarthy, her nose crude, her mouth wide. The outline of her head was
fine, and she wore her black hair parted and banded closely below her
ears. Her forehead was large, her expression sad and thoughtful. Don
Roberto Yorba was many times more a millionaire than "Jack" Belmont, but
Magdalena was not a spoiled child.

"I don't know," she said, with a marked hesitation of speech; "I'd like
to go out, but it doesn't seem right to take advantage of the fact that
papa and mamma are away--"

"What they don't know won't hurt them. I'd like to have Don Roberto
under my thumb for just one week. He'd get some of the tyranny knocked
out of him. Jack is a model parent--"

Magdalena flushed a dark ugly red. "I wish you would not speak in that
way of papa," she said. "I--I--well--I'm afraid he wouldn't let you come
here to study with me if he knew it."

"Well, I won't." Helena flung her arms round her friend and kissed her
warmly. "I wouldn't hurt his Spanish dignity for the world; only I do
wish you happened to be my real own cousin, or--that would be much
nicer--my sister."

Magdalena's troubled inner self echoed the wish; but few wishes, few
words, indeed, passed her lips.

"Well?" demanded Miss Phelps, coldly. "What is it to be? Do you girls
intend to study any more to-day, or not? Because--"

"We don't," said Helena, emphatically. And Magdalena, who invariably
gave way to her friend's imperious will, nodded deprecatingly. Miss
Phelps immediately left the room.

"She's glad to get out," said Helena, wisely. "She hates me, and I know
she's got a beau. Come! Come!" She pulled Magdalena from her chair, and
the two girls ran to the balcony beyond the windows and leaned over the
railing.

"There's nothing in all the world," announced Helena, "so beautiful as
California--San Francisco included--in spite of whirlwinds of dust, and
wooden houses, and cobblestone streets, and wooden sidewalks. One can
always live on a hill, and then you don't see the ugly things below. For
instance, from here you see nothing but that dark blue bay with the dark
blue sky above it, and opposite the pink mountains with the patches