“It is nothing to you if I dance with other men,” she said, rebelliously, although she took the seat he indicated.  “And to dance is not wrong.”

“Nothing is wrong.  In some countries the biggest liar is king.  We know as little of ethics—­except, to be sure, the ethics of civilization—­as one sex knows of another.  So we fall back on instinct.  I have not a prejudice, but I feel it disgusting to see a woman who is somewhat more to me than other women, embraced by another man.  It would infuriate me if done in private; why should it not at least disgust me in public?  I care as little for the approving seal of the conventions as I care whether other women—­including my own sisters—­waltz or not.”

And, alas! from that night Chonita never waltzed again.  “It is not that I care for his opinion,” she assured me later; “only he made me feel that I never wanted a man to touch me again.”

Valencia used every art of flashing eyes and pouting lips and gay sally—­there was nothing subtle in her methods—­to win Estenega to her side; but the sofa on which he sat with Chonita might have been the remotest star in the firmament.  Then, prompted by pique and determination to find ointment for her wounded vanity, she suddenly opened her batteries upon Reinaldo.  That beautiful young bridegroom was bored to the verge of dissolution by his solemn and sleepy Prudencia, who kept her wide eyes upon him with an expression of rapt adoration, exactly as she regarded the Stations in the Mission when performing the Via Crucis.  Valencia, to his mind, was the handsomest woman in the room, and he felt the flattery of her assault.  Besides, he was safely married.  So he drifted to her side, danced with her, flirted with her, devoted himself to her caprices, until every one was noting, and I thought that Prudencia would bawl outright.  Just in the moment, however, when our nerves were humming, Don Guillermo thumped on the door with his stick and ordered us all to go to bed.

XIX.

The next morning we started at an early hour for the Rancho de las Rocas, three leagues from Santa Barbara.  The populace remained in the booth, but we were joined by all our friends of the town, and once more were a large party.  We were bound for a merienda and a carnesada, where bullocks would be roasted whole on spits over a bed of coals in a deep excavation.  It took a Californian only a few hours to sleep off fatigue, and we were as fresh and gay as if we had gone to bed at eight the night before.

Valencia managed to ride beside Estenega, and I wondered if she would win him.  Woman’s persistence, allied to man’s vanity, so often accomplishes the result intended by the woman.  It seemed to me the simplest climax for the unfolding drama, although I should have been sorry for Diego.