The house until within two weeks of the wedding was full of visitors,—­neighbors whose ranchos lay ten leagues away or nearer, and the people of the town; all of them come to offer congratulations, chatter on the corridor by day and dance in the sala by night.  The court was never free of prancing horses pawing the ground for eighteen hours at a time under their heavy saddles.  Dona Trinidad’s cooking-girls were as thick in the kitchen as ants on an anthill, for the good things of Casa Grande were as famous as its hospitality, and not the least of the attractions to the merry visitors.  When we did not dance at home we danced at the neighbors’ or at the Presidio.  During the last two weeks, however, every one went home to rest and prepare for the festivities to succeed the wedding; and the old house was as quiet as a canon in the mountains.

Chonita took a lively concern in the preparations at first, but her interest soon evaporated, and she spent more and more time in the little library adjoining her bedroom.  She did less reading than thinking, however.  Once she came to me and tried for fifteen minutes to draw from me something in Estenega’s dispraise; and when I finally admitted that he had a fault or two I thought she would scalp me.  Still, at this time she was hardly more than fascinated, interested, tantalized by a mind she could appreciate but not understand.  If they had never met again he would gradually have moved backward to the horizon of her memory, growing dim and more dim, hovered in a cloud-bank for a while, then disappeared into that limbo which must exist somewhere for discarded impressions, and all would have been well.

XVI.

The evening before the wedding Prudencia covered her demure self with black gown and reboso, and, accompanied by Chonita, went to the Mission to make her last maiden confession.  Chonita did not go with her into the church, but paced up and down the long corridor of the wing, gazing absently upon the deep wild valley and peaceful ocean, seeing little beyond the images in her own mind.

That morning Alvarado and several members of the Junta had arrived, but not Estenega.  He had come as far as the Rancho Temblor, Alvarado explained, and there, meeting some old friends, had decided to remain over night and accompany them the next day to the ceremony.  As Chonita had stood on the corridor and watched the approach of the Governor’s cavalcade her heart had beaten violently, and she had angrily acknowledged that her nervousness was due to the fact that she was about to meet Diego Estenega again.  When she discovered that he was not of the party, she turned to me with pique, resentment, and disappointment in her face.

“Even if I cannot ever like him,” she said, “at least I might have the pleasure of hearing him talk.  There is no harm in that, even if he is an Estenega, a renegade, and the enemy of my brother.  I can hate him with my heart and like him with my mind.  And he must have cared little to see us again, that he could linger for another day.”