at never had they seen a people so light-hearted and
frolicking as the Californians, so hospitable, so like one great family.
And we were, we were. But you know of that time. Was not your mother
Conchitita Castro, if she did marry an American and has not taught you
ten words of Spanish? It is of Concha you would hear, and I ramble.
Well, who knows? perhaps I hesitate. Rezanov was of the Greek Church. No
priest in California would have married them even had Don Jose--_el
santo_ we called him--given his consent. It was for that reason Rezanov
went to obtain a dispensation from His Holiness and a license from the
King of Spain. Concha knew that he could not return for two years or
nearly that, nor even send her a letter; for why should ships come down
from Sitka until the treaty was signed? Only Rezanov could get what he
wanted, law or no law. And then too our Governor had forbidden the
British and Bostonians--so we called the Americans in those days--to
enter our ports. This Concha knew, and when one knows one can think in
storeys, as it were, and put the last at the top. It is not so bad as
the hope that makes the heart thump every morning and the eyes turn into
fountains at night. Dios! To think that I should ever have shed a tear
over a man. Chinchosas, all of them. However--I think Concha, who was
never quite as others, knew deep down in her heart that he would not
come back, that it was all too good to be true. Never was a man seen as
handsome as that one, and so clever--a touch of the devil in his
cleverness, but that may have been because he was a Russian. I know not.
And to be a great lady in St. Petersburg, and later--who can
tell?--vice-Tsarina of all this part of the world! No, it could not be.
It was a fairy tale. I only wonder that the bare possibility came into
the life of any woman,--and that a maiden of New Spain, in an unknown
corner, that might as well have been on Venus or Mars.

"But Concha had character. She was not one to go into a
decline--although I am woman enough to know that her pillow was wet many
nights; and besides she lost the freshness of her beauty. She was often
as gay as ever, but she cared less and less for the dance, and found
more to do at home. Don Jose was made Commandante of the Santa Barbara
Company that same year, and it was well for her to be in a place where
there were no memories of Rezanov. But late in the following year as the
time approached for his return, or news of him, s