belles of the coast, from San Diego up, had all gathered at Monterey for
these gayeties, but not one of them could be for a moment compared to
her. This was the beginning of the Senora's life as a married woman.
She was then just twenty. A close observer would have seen even then,
underneath the joyous smile, the laughing eye, the merry voice, a look
thoughtful, tender, earnest, at times enthusiastic. This look was the
reflection of those qualities in her, then hardly aroused, which made
her, as years developed her character and stormy fates thickened around
her life, the unflinching comrade of her soldier husband, the passionate
adherent of the Church. Through wars, insurrections, revolutions,
downfalls, Spanish, Mexican, civil, ecclesiastical, her standpoint,
her poise, remained the same. She simply grew more and more proudly,
passionately, a Spaniard and a Moreno; more and more stanchly and
fierily a Catholic, and a lover of the Franciscans.

During the height of the despoiling and plundering of the Missions,
under the Secularization Act, she was for a few years almost beside
herself. More than once she journeyed alone, when the journey was by
no means without danger, to Monterey, to stir up the Prefect of
the Missions to more energetic action, to implore the governmental
authorities to interfere, and protect the Church's property. It
was largely in consequence of her eloquent entreaties that Governor
Micheltorena issued his bootless order, restoring to the Church all the
Missions south of San Luis Obispo. But this order cost Micheltorena his
political head, and General Moreno was severely wounded in one of the
skirmishes of the insurrection which drove Micheltorena out of the
country.

In silence and bitter humiliation the Senora nursed her husband back
to health again, and resolved to meddle no more in the affairs of her
unhappy country and still more unhappy Church. As year by year she
saw the ruin of the Missions steadily going on, their vast properties
melting away, like dew before the sun, in the hands of dishonest
administrators and politicians, the Church powerless to contend with the
unprincipled greed in high places, her beloved Franciscan Fathers driven
from the country or dying of starvation at their posts, she submitted
herself to what, she was forced to admit, seemed to be the inscrutable
will of God for the discipline and humiliation of the Church. In a sort
of bewildered resignation she waited to s