Her eyes had darker shadows beneath them than those cast by her lashes; her face was pale and slightly hollowed.  She had suffered, and not for her mother.  “She shall suffer no more,” he thought.

“We hunt bear to-night,” he heard the governor say at length.

“I should like to go,” said Chonita, quickly.  “I should like to go out to-night.”

Immediately there was a chorus from all the Other women, excepting the Princess Helene and Prudencia; they wanted to go too.  Rotscheff, who would much rather have left them at home, consented with good grace, and Estenega’s spirits rose at once.  He would have a talk with Chonita that night, something he had not dared to hope for, and he suspected that she had promoted the opportunity.

The men remained in the dining-room after the ladies had withdrawn, and Estenega, restored to his normal condition, and in his natural element among these people of the world, expanded into the high spirits and convivial interest in masculine society which made him as popular with men as he was fascinating, through the exercise of more subtle faculties, to women.  Reinaldo watched him with jealous impatience; no one cared to hearken to his eloquence when Estenega talked; and he had come to Fort Ross only to have a conversation with his one-time enemy.  As he listened to Estenega, shorn, for the time-being, of his air of dictator and watchful ambition, a man of the world taking an enthusiastic part in the hilarity of the hour, but never sacrificing his dignity by assuming the role of chief entertainer, there grew within him a dull sense of inferiority:  he felt, rather than knew, that neither the city of Mexico nor gratified ambitions would give him that assured ease, that perfection of breeding, that calm sense of power, concealing so gracefully the relentless will and the infinite resource which made this most un-Californian of Californians seem to his Arcadian eyes a being of a higher star.  And hatred blazed forth anew.

As the men rose, finally, to go to the drawing-room, he asked Estenega to remain for a moment.  “Thou wilt keep thy promise soon, no?” he said when they were alone.

“What promise?”

“Thy promise to send me as diputado to the next Mexican Congress.”

Estenega looked at him reflectively.  He had little toleration for the man of inferior brain, and, although he did not underrate his power for mischief, he relied upon his own wit to circumvent him.  He had disposed of this one by warning Santa Ana, and he concluded to be annoyed by him no further.  Besides, as a brother-in-law, he would be insupportable except at the long range of mutual unamiability.

“I made you no promise,” he said, deliberately; “and I shall make you none.  I do not wish you in the city of Mexico.”

Reinaldo’s face grew livid.  “Thou darest to say that to me, and yet would marry my sister?”

“I would, and I shall.”