ll feel,"
she continued with exalted although somewhat vague poetry, "That it is
of you! You lofe the beast--it is therefore of a necessity _you_, my
Pancho! It is _your_ soul I shall erride like the wings of the
wind--your lofe in this beast shall be my only cavalier for ever." I
would have preferred something whose vicarious qualities were less
uncertain than I still felt Chu Chu's to be, but I kissed the girl's
hand submissively.

It was only when I attempted to accompany her in the flesh, on another
horse, that I felt the full truth of my instinctive fears. Chu Chu
would not permit any one to approach her mistress's side. My mounted
presence revived in her all her old blind astonishment and disbelief in
my existence; she would start suddenly, face about, and back away from
me in utter amazement as if I had been only recently created, or with
an affected modesty as if I had been just guilty of some grave
indecorum towards her sex which she really could not stand. The
frequency of these exhibitions in the public highway were not only
distressing to me as a simple escort, but as it had the effect on the
casual spectators of making Consuelo seem to participate in Chu Chu's
objections, I felt that, as a lover, it could not be borne. An attempt
to coerce Chu Chu ended in her running away. And my frantic pursuit of
her was open to equal misconstruction. "Go it, Miss, the little dude is
gainin' on you!" shouted by a drunken teamster to the frightened
Consuelo, once checked me in mid-career. Even the dear girl herself saw
the uselessness of my real presence, and after a while was content to
ride with "my soul."

Notwithstanding this, I am not ashamed to say that it was my custom,
whenever she rode out, to keep a slinking and distant surveillance of
Chu Chu on another horse, until she had fairly settled down to her
pace. A little nod of Consuelo's round black-and-red toreador hat or a
kiss tossed from her riding-whip was reward enough!

I remember a pleasant afternoon when I was thus awaiting her in the
village. The eternal smile of the Californian summer had begun to waver
and grow less fixed; dust lay thick on leaf and blade; the dry hills
were clothed in russet leather; the trade winds were shifting to the
south with an ominous warm humidity; a few days longer and the rains
would be here. It so chanced that this afternoon my seclusion on the
roadside was accidentally invaded by a village belle--a Western young
lady som