“I do not believe that.”  The woman in her arose in resentment.  “A life of duty must be empty, cold, and wrong.  It was not that we were made for.”

“Let us talk little of love, senorita:  it is a dangerous subject.”

“But it interests me, and I should like to understand it.”

“I will explain the subject to you fully, some day.  I have a fancy to do that on my own territory,—­up in the redwoods—­”

“Here is Prudencia.”

A small black figure swept down the steps of the church.  She bowed low to Estenega when he was presented, but uttered no word.  The Indian servants brought the horses to the door, and they rode down the valley to Casa Grande.

XVII.

The guests of Casa Grande—­there were many besides Alvarado and his party; the house was full again—­were gathered with the family on the corridor as Estenega, Chonita, and Prudencia dismounted at the extreme end of the court-yard.  As Reinaldo saw the enemy of his house approach he ran down the steps, advanced rapidly, and bowed low before him.

“Welcome, Senor Don Diego Estenega,” he said,—­“welcome to Casa Grande.  The house is thine.  Burn it if thou wilt.  The servants are thine; I myself am thy servant.  This is the supreme moment of my life, supremer even than when I learned of my acquittal of the foul charges laid to my door by scheming and jealous enemies.  It is long—­alas!—­since an Estenega and an Iturbi y Moncada have met in the court-yard of the one or the other.  Let this moment be the seal of peace, the death of feud, the unification of the North and the South.”

“You have the hospitality of the true Californian, Don Reinaldo.  It gives me pleasure to accept it.”

“Would, then, thy pleasure could equal mine!” “Curse him!” he added to Chonita, as Estenega went up the steps to greet Don Guillermo and Dona Trinidad, “I have just received positive information that it was he who kept me from distinguishing myself and my house in the Departmental Junta, he who cast me in a dungeon.  It poisons my happiness to sleep under the same roof with him.”

“Ay!” exclaimed Chonita.  “Why canst thou not be more sincere, my brother?  Hospitality did not compel thee to say so much to thine enemy.  Couldst thou not have spoken a few simple words like himself, and not blackened thy soul?”

“My sister! thou never spokest to me so harshly before.  And on my marriage eve!”

“Forgive me, my most beloved brother.  Thou knowest I love thee.  But it grieves me to think that even hospitality could make thee false.”