“What difference, if the next generation be beautiful?” she said, lightly.  “Look at Don Juan de la Borrasca.  See him gaze upon Panchita Lopez, who is just sixteen.  What does he care that the women of his day are coffee-colored and stringy or fat?  You will care as little when you too are brown and dried up, afraid to eat dulces, and each month seeking a new parting for your hair.”

“You are a hopeful seer!  But you—­are you resigned to the time when even the withered old beau will not look at you,—­you who are the loveliest woman in the Californias?”

It was the first compliment he had paid her, and she looked up with a swift blush, then lowered her eyes again.  “With truth, I never imagine myself except as I am now; but I should have always my books, and no husband to teach me that there were other women more fair.”

“And books will suffice, then?”

“Sure.”  She said it a little wistfully.  Then she added, abruptly, “I shall go to confession this week.”

“Ah!”

“Yes; for although I hate you still—­that is, I do not like you—­I have forgiven you.  I believe you to be kind and generous, although the enemy of my brother; that if you did oppose him and cast him into prison, you did so with a loyal motive; you cannot help making mistakes, for you are but human.  And I do not forget that if it were not for you he would not be a bridegroom to-day.  Also, you are not responsible for being an Estenega; so, although I do not forgive the blood in you,—­how could I, and be worthy to bear the name of Iturbi y Moncada?—­I forgive you, yourself, for being what you cannot help, and for what you have unwittingly and mistakenly done.  Do you understand?”

“I understand.  Your subtleties are magnificent.”

“You must not laugh at me.  Tell me, how do you like my friend Valencia?”

“Well enough.  I want to hear more about your confession.  You fall back into the bosom of your Church with joy, I suppose?”

“Ay!”

“And you would never disobey one of her mandates?”

“Holy God! no.”

“Why?”

“Why?  Because I am a Catholic.”

“That is not what I asked you.  Why are you a Catholic? if I must make myself more plain.  Why are you afraid to disobey?  Why do you cling to the Church with your back braced against your intelligence?  It is hope of future reward, I suppose,—­or fear?”

“Sure.  I want to go to the heaven of the good Catholic.”

“Do not waste this life, particularly the youth of it, preparing for a legendary hereafter.  Granting, for the sake of argument, that this existence is supplemented by another:  you have no knowledge of what elements you will be composed when you lay aside your mortal part to enter there.  Your power of enjoyment may be very thin indeed, like the music of a band without brass; the sort of happiness one can imagine a human being to experience out of whose anatomy the