r dress; to-night her blonde
harmonious loveliness was properly framed in a toilette of mignonette
greens, fresh from Paris. A moment later Reinaldo and Prudencia
appeared, the former as splendid a caballero as ever, although
wearing the chastened air of matrimony, the latter pre-maternally
consequential. Then came the officers and their wives, all brilliant
in evening dress; and a moment later dinner was announced.

Estenega sat at the right of his hostess, and that trained daughter of
the salon kept the table in a light ripple of conversation, sparkling
herself, without striking terror to the hearts of her guests. She and
Estenega were old friends, and usually indulged in lively sallies,
ending some times in a sharp war of words, for she was a very clever
woman; but to-night he gave her absent attention: he watched Chonita
furtively, and thought of little else.

Her eyes had darker shadows beneath them than those cast by her
lashes; her face was pale and slightly hollowed. She had suffered, and
not for her mother. "She shall suffer no more," he thought.

"We hunt bear to-night," he heard the governor say at length.

"I should like to go," said Chonita, quickly. "I should like to go out
to-night."

Immediately there was a chorus from all the Other women, excepting the
Princess Helene and Prudencia; they wanted to go too. Rotscheff, who
would much rather have left them at home, consented with good grace,
and Estenega's spirits rose at once. He would have a talk with Chonita
that night, something he had not dared to hope for, and he suspected
that she had promoted the opportunity.

The men remained in the dining-room after the ladies had withdrawn,
and Estenega, restored to his normal condition, and in his natural
element among these people of the world, expanded into the high
spirits and convivial interest in masculine society which made him as
popular with men as he was fascinating, through the exercise of
more subtle faculties, to women. Reinaldo watched him with jealous
impatience; no one cared to hearken to his eloquence when Estenega
talked; and he had come to Fort Ross only to have a conversation
with his one-time enemy. As he listened to Estenega, shorn, for the
time-being, of his air of dictator and watchful ambition, a man of
the world taking an enthusiastic part in the hilarity of the hour,
but never sacrificing his dignity by assuming the role of chief
entertainer, there grew within him a dull sense of