blanks."

"Tell me," she said, imperiously, "what do you want?"

"Shall I tell you? I never have spoken of it to a living soul but
Alvarado. Shall I tell it to a woman,--and an Iturbi y Moncada? Could
the folly of man further go?"

"If I am a woman I am an Iturbi y Moncada, and if I am an Iturbi y
Moncada I have the honor of its generations in my veins."

"Very good. I believe you would not betray me, even in the interest of
your house. Would you?"

"No."

"And I love to talk to you, to tell you what I would tell no other.
Listen, then. An envoy goes to Mexico next week with letters from
Alvarado, desiring that I be the next governor of the Californias, and
containing the assurance that the Departmental Junta will endorse
me. I shall follow next month to see Santa Ana personally; I know him
well, and he was a friend of my father's. I wish to be invested with
peculiar powers; that is to say, I wish California to be practically
overlooked while I am governor and I wish it understood that I shall
be governor as long as I please. Alvarado will hold no office under
the Americans, and is as ready to retire now as a few years later. Of
course my predilection for the Americans must be carefully concealed
both from the Mexican government and the mass of the people here:
Santa Ana and Alvarado know what is bound to come; the Mexicans,
generally, retain enough interest in the Californias to wish to keep
them. I shall be the last governor of the Department, and I shall
employ that period to amalgamate the native population so closely that
they will make a strong contingent in the new order of things and
be completely under my domination. I shall establish a college with
American professors, so that our youth will be taught to think, and to
think in English. Alvarado has done something for education, but not
enough; he has not enforced it, and the methods are very primitive.
I intend to be virtually dictator. With as little delay as possible
I shall establish a newspaper,--a powerful weapon in the hands of a
ruler, as well as a factor of development. Then I shall organize a
superior court for the punishment of capital crimes. Not that I do not
recognize the right of a man to kill if his reasons satisfy himself,
but there can be no subservience to authority in a country where
murder is practically licensed. American immigration will be more than
encouraged, and it shall be distinctly understood by the Americans
that I encoura