ays a little dearer to me than his second wife,
the proud Dona Maria Ortega, perhaps because Rafaela belonged
pre-eminently to San Francisco. Her father, Ensign Sal, was acting
comandante of the Presidio when Vancouver visited the Coast, and Rafaela
and Luis Argueello grew up together in the little adobe settlement."

"Go on," said the skeptic, leaning comfortably against a tree trunk.
"This old Mexican governor seems to have had an interesting romance."

"He wasn't old," I protested, "only forty-six when he died. He was a
splendid type of a young Spanish grandee, tall and lithe of form, with
the dark skin and hair of his race. He combined the freedom born of an
out-of-door life with the courtly manners inherited from generations of
Spanish ancestry. To Rafaela Sal, watching the soldiers file out of the
mud-walled Presidio, it seemed that none sat his horse so straight nor
so bravely as did Don Luis Argueello. And at night to the young soldier
dozing before the campfire in the forest, the billowy smoke seemed to
shape itself into the soft folds of a lace mantilla from which looked
out the smiling face of a lovely grey-eyed girl, framed in an exquisite
mist of copper-colored hair.

"There was no opposition on the part of the parents to the union of
these young people. The elder Argueello loved the sweet Rafaela as if she
were his own daughter, and Ensign Sal was proud to claim the splendid
young soldier as a son-in-law. So the betrothal was solemnized, but
since Don Luis was a Spanish officer, the marriage must await the
consent of the king, and forthwith papers were dispatched to the court
of Madrid. California was an isolated province in those days and the
packet boat, touching on the shore but twice a year, frequently brought
papers from Spain dated nine months previous, so the older people
affirmed that permission could not be received for two years, while Luis
and Rafaela declared that if the king answered at once--and surely he
would recognize the importance of haste--word might be received in
eighteen months.

"After a year and a half had passed the young people could talk of
little besides the expected arrival of the boat with an order from the
king. Frequently Luis would climb the hills back of the Presidio where
the wide expanse of the ocean could be seen. At last a sail was
discovered on the horizon and the little settlement was thrown into a
turmoil of excitement. Luis was first at the beach and impatientl